The Educated Socialism of Obama

We generally do not post advertisements but I am doing so now, not for any financial recommendation, but for the historical and analogous information regarding our economy.  On 2/16/2013, Steve Sjuggerud's DailyWealth, a free email subscription, contained an article by Porter Stansberry, who did an excellent job of describing the perils of the economy and social ills we have been experiencing and are experiencing even more so now under President Obama. --bc

In Wednesday's essay, I laid out the "great lie" that is bankrupting America. ✧ At the heart of this lie – told by so many of our political leaders and believed by so many of my fellow citizens – is a horrifying turn of events. As I mentioned, the drive for freedom and a better life through hard work, saving, and independence has been replaced by a craven need for the illusion of security. ✧ Rather than trying to leave our children in possession of a better world – with more financial security – political leaders around the world now bicker about how to change the rules so that still more debt can be stacked upon their grandchildren. ✧ For an idea on how things will turn out, a few lessons from history are instructive...

The Spanish Empire destroyed itself by "finding" money, rather than by building industries. And the key to its temporary wealth was a single mountain in Bolivia, "Cerro Rico" – the Mountain of Riches.

At least, that's what the Conquistadors named it. In Bolivia, they call it "the mountain that eats people." Thousands of slaves died trying to satisfy Spain's lust for treasure.

In Cerro Rico today, silver is still mined by people making a few dollars a day using pickaxes in dust-filled shafts with no ventilation, no light, and no safety features of any kind. The 10,000 miners who work there every day toil under the constant fear that the entire mountain could collapse on them. After 400 years of unregulated mining, it's like Swiss cheese.

Bolivia's politicians use these conditions to demand more power and implement more socialism. Of course, it's the poverty caused by decades of socialism that actually prevents modern mines from being built.

Last month, Bolivia's current socialist strongman, Evo Morales, published his Ten Commandments Against Capitalism. He starts out broadly with No. 10…

Economic development must not be oriented to the market, to capital and to profit; development must be comprehensive and be oriented to human happiness, harmony and equilibrium with Mother Earth.

Then he gets to the real point…

We must free ourselves from that colonial bond called the External Debt, which serves only to blackmail us, to oblige us to hand over our assets and privatize our natural resources, and to destroy the sovereignty of peoples and states.

The colonial External Debt is the mechanism of exaction and impoverishment that afflicts the developing countries and limits their access to development. We call for canceling this unjust External Debt. No more inequality. No more poverty. It is time to distribute the wealth.

 These aren't just empty words, either. In June 2011, Morales nationalized the Toronto-listed South American Silver exploration firm, promising only compensation "later." Six weeks later, Bolivia decided that the compensation paid to the Canadians would be zero. Nada, zilch, nothing. Apparently, it was time to seize their wealth.

The people of Bolivia cheered this madness. As their reward… Bolivians will continue to work in some of the most dangerous and least-efficient mines in the world. Their real wages will continue to fall. That's because without capital investment, without savings, without property rights… without the responsibilities of capitalism… there will be no increase in wealth.

Bolivia's socialist policies will have the same economic effect as similar activities in Venezuela and Argentina… The black market rate for dollars in Venezuela is three to four times higher than the official exchange rate. In Argentina, the "blue" dollar rate is 50% more than the official rate.

The looming crisis in these countries interests us in two ways… First, because so much of the world's raw materials (including food and hard commodities, like metals) come from countries like these, a return to socialism will undoubtedly cause shortages and price spikes around the world.

But on a more important and deeper level, ask yourself, what's the real difference between Evo Morales and our current American political leaders?

President Obama and his puppet at the central bank, Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke, are also calling for us to cancel our external debt. They're just saying it in a smarter way, calling it "quantitative easing."

And what's the real difference between what Morales advocates in his Ten Commandments Against Capitalism and what's happened in the U.S. over the past decade? First, President Bush granted free medicine to every retired American. Then, Obama pushed through "free" health care for everyone. In his State of the Union address, he labeled these benefits, plus Social Security payments, "civil rights."

That's pure madness. Rights are something you're born with as a human being. They describe what people can't do to you or take from you.

The government cannot guarantee you any benefit or service without first taking it from someone else. That's why the promise of socialism is merely the promise of plunder. Whether it will benefit you depends on where you stand. However, the nation as a whole cannot become wealthy through the plunder of its own citizens. This one fact explains why Argentina – which was the fifth-wealthiest nation in the world 100 years ago – now ranks 50th.

That's where we're headed. Make no mistake. By 2020, the costs of Social Security and Medicare alone will reach $2.5 trillion a year. That's more than the U.S. federal government collects in all forms of tax ($2.4 trillion) today.

The only things funding these programs are lies and taxes. We've been paying for these programs out of current revenues all along – just like convicted hedge-fund scammer Bernie Madoff used new money to create the illusion of returns for existing clients. There is no way we can afford these obligations without making them far more redistributive and increasing payroll taxes enormously. Obama says "of course" we need more taxes. And he's going to do everything in his power to levy them.

It's time to distribute the wealth, all around the world.

AT THIS POINT THE ARTICLE TURNS INTO A FINANCIAL RECOMMENDATION BUT THE INFORMATION IS STILL WORTHWHILE READING. --bc

The true costs of the world's return to socialism will strike the mining industry first. That's because mining requires immense capital investments over long periods of time. These mines are sitting ducks for politicians, who can tax them or nationalize them easily… all while the public cheers them on…

TAKE NOTE THAT STANSBERRY WRITES, "...THE WORLD'S RETURN TO SOCIALISM WILL STRIKE THE MINING INDUSTRY FIRST." OTHER INDUSTRIES WILL FOLLOW. --bc

But that greatly reduces existing supply and makes new supplies incredibly difficult to procure. In short, you can print money, but you can't print metals. And this explains the price spike in gold and silver over the last four years.

Still, all these precious metals do come from somewhere…

While we don't believe that mining companies are a good investment in the long run, they can be incredibly lucrative as short-term speculations. Politically driven market disruptions make mining stocks soar. That's why gold- and silver-mining companies have also long been thought of as crisis hedges – just like refined metal. And we're about to enter an extended – perhaps decades-long – period of unprecedented, politically caused market disruption.

That's why I'm encouraging my readers to buy precious metals like gold, silver, and platinum. Although these metals have appreciated in value over the past 12 years, they have much further to run.

Good investing,

Porter Stansberry

Further Reading: "The world's markets are beginning to go haywire," Porter wrote Wednesday. "You can see the signs everywhere… And the best way to protect yourself from catastrophe is to benefit from the same policies that are causing it." Get the details here: The Great Lie That Will Bankrupt America.

Read More......

The New Leviathan: How the Left-Wing Money Machine Shapes American Politics and Threatens America’s Future

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) writes, [Excerpt/Book Review] "This advantage means liberal groups far outspend conservative ones. On immigration, the 117 progressive groups identified by Mr. Horowitz and Mr. Laksin [authors of The New Leviathan: How the Left-wing Money Machine Shapes American Politics and Threatens America’s Future] have 22 times the funding of the nine conservative groups. On environmental issues, the count is 553 liberal groups against 32 conservative ones, and the left has 462 times the funding of the right. A broad range of liberal groups thrive not because they have significant popular support, but because their big-donor funding stream is so massive and reliable. ✧ This isn’t just a story of numbers. Mr. Horowitz and Mr. Laksin point out that much of this money is the diverted product of the free-market system progressives are trying to undermine." Read more at Frontpagemag.com... Read More......

Did Obama Say Capitalism Doesn’t Work?

4/2/2012 - Raising campaign cash in Maine on Friday, March 30, Obama said Republicans want to return to economic policies that would let Wall Street play by its own set of rules and allow insurance companies to roll back health coverage. "We won't win the race for new jobs and new businesses and middle-class security if we cling to this same old, worn-out, tired 'You're on your own' economics that the other side is peddling," Obama said. "It was tried in the decades before the Great Depression. It didn't work then. It was tried in the last decade. It didn't work," he said. "You know, the idea you would keep on doing the same thing over and over again, even though it's been proven not to work. That's a sign of madness."  Read more at Fox Nation... Read More......

Enemies of the American Dream

Republished from earlier posting on 3/15/2007

CapMag.com via News Wire , February 26, 2007 - Irvine, CA--America has long been known as the country in which individuals, no matter where they begin in life, have the freedom necessary to achieve great success--to live the American Dream. Yet the critics of "income inequality," complaining about high CEO pay, endless "dead-end jobs," and allegedly low "social mobility," say that the American Dream has become a fiction--and that the government must come to the rescue with new welfare spending.

In fact, said Alex Epstein, "Today's America, thanks to its legacy of economic freedom, offers unprecedented economic opportunity to all of us.

"Thanks to the ingenuity of individuals under generations of American capitalism, today we have available to us literally thousands of types of well-paying jobs, and myriad resources from which to acquire new skills and knowledge--this, even in spite of our horrible system of public education. Immigrants who come here speaking no English, but who work hard and have a commitment to self-improvement, routinely achieve great success--while their children fill America's top universities."

Anyone who claims that in America today it is nearly impossible to improve your economic situation is lying to you. Indeed, the biggest obstacle many Americans face is that very lie--the determinist philosophy that your success or failure is pre-ordained by economic circumstances. Those who accept this philosophy of failure will not be willing to exert the effort, self-discipline, and commitment to self-improvement that success requires. They will be ripe targets for anti-capitalist politicians who sell them on the latest welfare scheme by telling them that their problems are not of their own making, but rather of an overly capitalist system that permits such income inequality."

Americans must reject the present public outcry against income inequality, and recognize that the American Dream can become a reality for each of us--as long as we embrace a philosophy of responsibility and success, not determinism and failure." Read More......

CAPMAG: What the health care bill actually says...

CAPITALISM MAGAZINE, 12/5/2009 by John David Lewis - Excerpt from What The "Affordable Health Care For America Act," HR3962, Actually Says:

In many ways the bill is a convoluted, uncoordinated list of compromises between thousand of legislators, legislative aides, and lobbyists. Yet the bill has two main thrusts, with one central meaning. The first thrust is a massive increase in government power. The second is the total rejection of the free market. The central meaning of both is the repudiation of individual rights. No longer will Americans have the liberty to preserve their own lives in the way they judge best from now on, they will have to conform to government controls on the most intimate details of their lives.

Read More......

FP: Mr. Scrooge's capitalist myth

FINANCIAL POST/OPINION, 12/22/2009 by Peter Foster - "Disney's 3-D adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is terrific. What continues to amaze is how this classic is treated not primarily as a tale of redemption but, according to Agence France Presse, as 'a biting indictment of 19th century capitalism.' ∴ First, we might note that nobody profited more from the impact of capitalism on literature than Charles Dickens. As for Scrooge, how does this peculiar man -- 'solitary as an oyster' -- represent an indictment of capitalism except for those who continue to embrace the nonsense notion that commercial society eradicates goodwill?" Read more at the Financial Post...

If you believe that free people and free markets go together, then you'll enjoy the end of this article. --bc

Also recommended at FP: 12/18/2009, Wikipedia's Climate Doctor by Lawrence Solomon Read More......

Ship of Fools: Obama's Intimates and Advisors

AMERICAN THINKER, 10/12/2009 by Mac Fuller (Hat tip: Linda Bartcher) - Mr. Fuller describes a very small sampling of the locust horde of Leftist bureaucrats President Barack Hussein Obama has deliberately chosen to help him grasp the helm of America's ship of state, strip it from the American people, and steer it hard to port. The Obama Administration is plainly subverting democracy in America, wildly careening our previous 230-year history of democracy so dangerously Leftward that after a mere nine months we are in terrible danger of sinking.

In these thumbnails, three dominant themes of the Obama Administration emerge - fanatically uncompromising anti-capitalism, dangerous and blatant anti-Semitism, and the societal inculcation of dogmatic Leftist, Socialist "faith" through indoctrination of American school children beginning with the earliest ages - a practice instituted by Lenin in Communist Russia and now pounding its way into the American academic mainstream through the prolific efforts and influence of self-proclaimed Communist, Obama friend, and likely "autobiography" ghost writer, William Ayers, as well as Obama appointees like Charles Freeman and Kevin Jennings.

Make no mistake. These people are about Socialism, and they are about power. Their power. Read all the thumbnails at American Thinker...

or here...
___________________________________________________________

A sampling of President Barack Hussein Obama's morally bankrupt White House "Brain Trust"

1. Valerie Jarrett
2. Patrick Gaspard
3. Eric Holder
4. Cecelia Muñoz
5. Samantha Power(s)
6. Charles Freeman
7. Scott Gration
8. Rahm Emmanuel
9. Ezekiel Emmanuel
10. Cass Sunstein
11. Van Jones
12. Carol Browner
13. John Holdren
14. Kevin Jennings
15. Chai Feldblum
16. William Ayers
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Valerie Jarrett -- Obama Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs. Ms. Jarrett, a product of two decades in rough-and-tumble "Chicago way" politics, and a 17-year friend of the Obama's, is described as "the other side of Barack Obama's brain." Born in Iran, Jarrett, who speaks Persian, moved to the United States as a child. A product of an elite, private, New England boarding school, she is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School.

Jarrett served in the administration of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington (who, prior to his election, failed to file income tax returns for 19 years and during it maintained dubious Socialist ties) as well as in the scandal-ridden, current Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Her step-father, Vernon Jarrett was associated with Frank Marshall Davis, the youthful Barack Obama's mentor from age 10 until college - a Chicago Communist Party (USA) member who moved to Hawaii from Chicago. Frank Marshal Davis is now immortalized in President Barack Hussein Obama's "autobiography" as "Uncle Frank" -- conveniently with no mention of his last name nor who he was.

According to the Washington Post, Ms. Jarrett was for many years both Michelle and Barack Obama's "tutor." Virtually every mainstream media outlet has not only done an over-the-top puff piece on Valerie Jarrett (as they repeatedly have with Mr. Obama and his wife), but all agree that neither the President not Mrs. Obama makes a move without first consulting Ms. Jarrett. Ms. Jarrett was personally responsible for bringing self-described Communist Van Jones into the White House as President Obama's environmental "Green Czar." [1]

2. Patrick Gaspard -- White House Political Director (this is the position Karl Rove held in the Bush Administration). Prior to coming on board as President Obama's right-hand man, Mr. Gaspard was a registered federal lobbyist for the SEIU - the union members (thugs?) called-in by the Administration to run interference (sometimes violent) between Democrat members of Congress who support ObamaCare and their own constituents. Prior to that, Gaspard worked for ACORN - the community organizing front which Barack Obama worked for as a trainer, represented as a lawyer, helped as a politician, and funneled money to as a presidential candidate.

The President Obama is as much a product of ACORN as it is of him. He worked closely with the "community organizing" group for many years, represented them in court, and was a member of the board of Chicago's Woods Fund at the time it funneled $200,000 to an ACORN affiliate. Mr. Obama praised the organization extravagantly both during and after his election, and his campaign "donated" over $800,000 to an offshoot group controlled by ACORN (Citizens Services, Inc.) - to "get out the vote."

Gaspard worked directly for now-ACORN chief Bertha Lewis as her political director for the main ACORN office which is located in New York. ACORN is mired in long-standing as well as new and growing allegations of fraud, voter-registration fraud, corruption, and massive embezzlement of funds - ACORN operative organizations have received tens of millions of dollars in federal grants.

ACORN pledged $35,000,000 for voter registration drives in the 2008 election cycle.

In 2004, Patrick Gaspard served as National Field Director for America Coming Together (ACT), a group which was later fined $775,000 in civil penalties by the federal government. ACT hired felons - some convicted of sex offenses, assault and burglary - to conduct door-to-door voter registration drives in Missouri and at least two other swing states, and also employed felons as voter canvassers in major metropolitan areas in Missouri, Florida, Ohio. [2]

3. Eric Holder -- Attorney General of the United States. A handpicked Obama/Jarrett selection, who earlier this year referred to the United States as "a nation of cowards" on race relations, Mr. Holder is a shiningly despicable example of everything wrong when politics and personal ambition dictate the parameters of American justice.

Prior to grasping the brass ring of the department where he'd toiled during the Clinton Administration, Mr. Holder was responsible for these widely-reported miscarriages of justice:

(1) He streamlined the Clinton Administration's pardon of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich by steering Rich's representatives to a former White House counsel, then helped lobby the President to pardon Rich ("an unrepentant fugitive wanted on extensive fraud, racketeering, and trading-with-the-enemy charges"). Holder did so for personal gain, later admitting he hoped this would help him become Attorney General in a Gore administration. Mr. Holder concealed the pardon negotiations from other prosecuting and investigative agencies to prevent their opposition. Mr. Rich's wife was a generous donor to both President Clinton's library as well as his legal-defense fund.

(2) "In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton's commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN conspirators. These pardons - of terrorists who even Holder has conceded had not expressed any remorse - were issued in the months after al-Qaeda's 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.... The commutations were nakedly political, obviously designed by Clinton to assist his wife's impending Senate campaign by appealing to New York's substantial Puerto Rican vote."

(3) Holder was also instrumental in the "stealth pardons" of two Weather Underground terrorists, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans (both closely associated with President Obama's terrorist friends, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn). Rosenberg and Evans had been serving decades-long sentences for bombings targeting American government facilities. Again Holder helped circumvent the pardon process and evade objections from prosecutors regarding the terrorists' jail terms.

Just this summer, now-Attorney General Holder dismissed prosecution of an obvious case (it was filmed) of voter intimidation by members of the New Black Panthers, while also instigating prosecutorial investigations into CIA interrogation techniques of terrorist combatants. Attorney General Holder is a strong advocate for the release of the Islamofascist enemy combatants currently held at Guantanamo Bay. [3]

4. Cecelia Muñoz -- White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. Prior to being summoned to the White House by President Obama, Ms. Muñoz was Senior Vice President of The National Council of La Raza. La Raza (literally, "The Race") is the largest Hispanic lobbying organization in America, and is committed not merely to a socialist agenda, but, essentially, the return of California, if not larger portions of the American West, to Hispanics. It lobbies heavily for completely open borders with Mexico, as well as amnesty for all illegal aliens. In order to carry out this agenda, the U.S. federal government awarded over $15.2 million in grants to the organization in 2005 alone.

La Raza is intimately involved with the "the radical racist group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West." Aztlan's goal is the formation of a Chicano state. The closing two sentences of Atzlan's motto are: La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada": "For The Race everything. Outside The Race, nothing." Which ought to be as chilling as the idea of the U.S. government funding these people.

President Obama's recent appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, has also long been deeply involved with La Raza - a fact which all Democrat Senators ignored during her confirmation hearing.

5. Samantha Power -- Senior Director, Multilateral Affairs, National Security Council. Ms. Power, a professor of public policy at Harvard [who is married to President Obama's Leftist fringe academic Cass Sunstein, the Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs] was only seemingly thrown under the Obama campaign bus for referring to Hillary Clinton as "a monster" during the 2008 Democrat primary. In 2009 President Obama, tapped her to occupy her senior White House foreign policy position.

Ms. Power, a "fierce critic of Israel,... was indisputably Barack Obama's closest foreign policy adviser during the campaign. They go back years." Ms. Power is a notorious acolyte of appeasement-challenged, Neville-Chamberlain-clone Zbigniew Brzezinski (former President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser) who recently stated that the U.S. should shoot down any Israeli planes which, out of self-preservation, might fly through Iraqi air space to destroy Iran's developing nuclear facilities. Ms. Power agrees with the Charles-Freeman-published Walt-Mearsheimer-essay school of thought that America is run and being destroyed by a cabal of Jews. Power promotes the policies of disgraced anti-Semitic, Israeliphobic, pro-PLO, pro-Syria, Obama adviser Robert Malley who advocated not merely talking with Hamas, but funding the terrorist organization because he feels their policies and governance mirror that of Israel. The Obama Administration cut visible ties with Malley shortly after the election.

Power, who stridently criticized the invasion and "occupation" of Iraq, repeatedly calling for the removal of American forces from that nation, curiously advocates that America send armed military forces, "a mammoth protection force" and an "external intervention", to impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. While giving the PLO, Fatah, Hamas and other obviously terrorist Arab state organizations a pass, Ms. Power views Israel, the only democratic and non-totalitarian, nation in the Middle East, as guilty of war crimes.

She favors slashing, if not eliminating, United States aid to Israel - which is surrounded by several hundred million Muslims who daily pray for its total annihilation - and, apparently, giving the money to the Palestinians instead.

Ms. Power, and virtually all of her truth-through-force ilk ignore the fact that on the day Israel gained independence it was immediately attacked by the surrounding Arab neighbors who erroneously believed they could destroy the nascent country in a matter of hours. "Palestinians" (there is no such country, nor has there been since Biblical times) who now form the "Palestinian problem" were not forced to leave Israel but instead chose to do so because Israel became a Jewish state. Hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Arabs remained and now form a large core group of Israeli citizenry.

The approximately 750,000 "Palestinians" who left, now number approximately 4,000,000. They constitute a "problem" because of all the Arab countries only Jordan has allowed them to become a part of its society. The other Arab countries bordering Israel keep the "Palestinians" in enormous desert internment camps. And they have done so to their Arab brethren for 60 years. Ms. Power and her comrades exquisitely fail to note that Jews were forced to leave Arab countries and relocate to the newly-formed Israeli state.

Like her pro-Arab "realist" co-religionists Charles Freeman, Robert Malley, Zbigniew Brzezinsk, billionaire George Soros (an influential Obama supporter), and others of their stripe, Powers opposes the "Israel lobby." She, as they, adamantly rejects the participation of American supporters of Israel, including Christians, in foreign policy discussions of the Middle East.

For all Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's public visibility, it may not be much of a conjecture that her job has been outsourced to the alpha female who once referred to Mrs. Clinton as a "monster." [5]

6. Charles Freeman -- Nominated, but not confirmed, as Chairman of the (United States) National Intelligence Council - which is responsible for producing national intelligence estimates for the president and his advisors. Mr. Freeman has a distinguished résumé of long service in both the State and Defense Departments, however, his "distinctive political views and affiliations" include: troubling financial ties to King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia who funds the Middle East Policy Council (formerly the American Arab Affairs Council) which Mr. Freeman heads; organizational support for professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt's lengthy, controversial, and essentially anti-Jewish essay, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"; his stated viewpoint that "the primary reason America confronts a terrorism problem today is "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation"; praise for the terrorist organization, Hamas, as the only "democratically-elected" government in the Middle East; and, bizarrely, unabashedly siding with the Chinese government over the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989 - Mr. Freeman criticized the Chinese government for being "overly cautious."

Once Leftist liberal, New York Senator Chuck Schumer spoke against Freeman's nomination, the gentleman withdrew - but not without "blaming his own disgrace on a Jewish conspiracy."

During his Congressional investigation, Mr. Freeman was charged with "[p]romoting public schools textbooks which the independent Textbook League describe 'a vehicle for disseminating disinformation, including a multitude of false, distorted or utterly absurd claims that are presented as historical facts. ...[with] three principal purposes: inducing teachers to embrace Islamic religious beliefs; inducing teachers to embrace political views that are favored by the...Middle East Policy Council (formerly the American Arab Affairs Council)...; and impelling teachers to disseminate those religious beliefs and political views in schools." [6]

7. Scott Gration -- President Obama's Special Envoy to the Sudan. His diplomatic policy is, quite literally the following:

"We've got to think about giving out cookies," said Gration who was appointed in March, "Kids, countries -- they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement."

As even that bastion of liberal blather the Washington Post noted, "U.S. diplomacy has remained mostly in the hands of Obama's special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, who is pushing toward normalized relations with the only country in the world led by a president indicted on war-crimes charges."

While President Obama's handpicked "Special Envoy" was tempting genocidal Muslim radicals with "cookies" and "gold stars," marauding bands of guerrillas in the Sudan crucified seven Christians. [7]

8. Rahm ("dead fish") Emanuel -- White House Chief of Staff. Mr. Emanuel is the notorious hardball political player from Chicago's North Side which he represented in Congress prior to his current incarnation as President Obama's political henchman and myrmidon. The ironically named Mr. Emanuel ("God with us") is "relentlessly partisan," thereby quite succinctly putting the lie to Mr. Obama's campaign claim to "post-partisanship."

Nicknamed "Rhambo," President Obama's Chief of Staff - the highest ranking office of the Executive Branch of the President of the United States - is well-know for the following accomplishments:

(1) a casual conversation style addictively laced with the most outrageous profanities and gutter language at any and all times;

(2) sending a 2½ foot-long dead and decomposing fish to lobbyist Allen Secrest with whom he was angry;

(3) threatening then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair just prior to a joint appearance with then-President Bill Clinton: "This is important. Don't f--- it up.";

(4) at dinner the night after Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992, "Rhambo" ranted about a long list of people who were the subject of his ire. As he shouted each "enemy's" name, Mr. Emanuel punctuated his rage by forcefully stabbing the dinner table and screaming, "Dead!"

Outside of murdering a Congressional page, it is relatively difficult to improve upon these glowing characteristics of mental stability and leadership. [8] Rahm Emanuel is Ezekiel Emanuel, "Dr. Death's," brother.

9. Ezekiel Emanuel -- President Obama's Special Advisor for Health Policy to the Office of Management and Budget. Nicknamed in the press "Dr. Death" after former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey pointed out Dr. Emanuel's "healthcare" role assisting the White House in the preparation and administration of federal budget recommendations for guiding healthcare and healthcare initiatives, Dr. Emanuel (again, application of the absurdly ironic name, "God with us") is a "bioethicist." He is also hailed as President Obama's "Rationer-in-Chief."

Generally, Emanuel's idea of healthcare rationing is to greatly restrict many treatments, medicines, and procedures to anyone over 40 and more particularly to anyone over 65. Dr. Emanuel feels similarly about the newly born until they have attained several years of age at which time he begins to view them in Malthusian terms of potential communitarian utility.

As Lt. Governor McCaughey noted, "In numerous writings, Dr. Emanuel chastises physicians for thinking only about their own patient's needs." This is the man who was personally tapped to guide ObamaCare health initiatives - not only by President Obama and his Chief of Staff... but also by "the other side of Barack's brain," Valerie Jarrett.

Mr. Emanuel is yet another in a tedious yet frighteningly long line of unqueried, unquestioned, and unvetted Obama advisors and "czars" about whom nothing can be known until pulled from beneath labyrinths of liberal camouflage by interested citizens, conservative Internet bloggers, and the staffs of conservative talk shows. Mainstream media long ago forfeited its credibility as well as its societal role as the fourth estate.

Dr. Emanuel is a member of the President's Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (curiously enough authorized under the dazzling rushed-through and unread by a single Congressman, American Recovery and Investment Act... "the Stimulus Bill") which, if allowed, will make decisions about the validity, "relative strengths and weakness of various medical interventions" as well as give clinicians...information to make decisions that will improve the performance of the U.S. health care system. Not improve medical care much less your medical care, but the "system." It's called "rationing," and it will very likely result in unnecessary and preventable early deaths. On a very large scale.

One final point. Due to the ambiguity of the relevant language in the Stimulus Bill as well as in the various ObamaCare "reform" proposals, there will not only be great latitude for interpretation of various laws' meaning, but these interpretations will require being instituted, oversight, and, of course, regulation. The necessity of regulation allows President Obama's Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein carte blanche to regulate whatever he likes.

Mr. Emanuel is the brother of White House Chief of Staff, and former North Side Chicago Congressman (5th District of Illinois) Rahm ("dead fish") Emanuel. [9]

10. Cass Sunstein -- Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs. He is a Harvard Law School professor and newly-minted husband of President Obama's Senior Director, Multilateral Affairs, National Security Council, the Israel-phobic Samantha Power (one of several husband-wife teams in the Obama White House). Mr. Sunstein's belief structure could understandably be called "Leftist kook" or "fringe" if not downright lunatic. Herewith:

In a 2007 speech at Harvard, Sunstein called for banning all hunting in the United States. All. Everywhere.

He actually put in writing, in his 2004 book, Animals that, "Animals should be permitted to bring [law] suit, with human beings as their representatives...."

"[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, in scientific experiments, and in agriculture."

Mr. Sunstein, who openly argues for bringing socialism to the U.S. and even lends support to communism, wrote, "The absence of a European-style social welfare state is certainly connected with the widespread perception among the white majority that the relevant programs would disproportionately benefit African Americans (and more recently Hispanics)..."

"[A]lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine. And if the Court is right, then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms."

Were Mr. Sunstein to succeed as President Obama's head regulator of all things American, what might happen to those millions of hunting rifles and shotguns he doesn't want gathering dust in your cabinet?

Mr. Sunstein is a reputed "1st Amendment scholar." Having attended law school myself and actually practiced law for a quarter century rather than retreat to the head-swelling-brain-shrinking environs of academia, I can assure you that if he is, America is in very deep trouble. President Obama has made clear his White House Masterregulator is intended to regulate virtually every aspect of American's lives - including the environment, healthcare, finance, and the economy - regardless of your feelings about such matters much less your freedom and liberty. Sunstein has argued in his prolific literary works (one bookstore tour de force was a whopping 84 pages) that the Internet is anti-democratic because of the way users can filter out information of their own choosing. He went on to assert: [10]

A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government... Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom's name.

As WorldNetDaily noted:

"It's hard to imagine President Obama nominating a more dangerous candidate for regulatory czar than Cass Sunstein....Not only is Sunstein an animal-rights radical, but he also seems to have a serious problem with our First Amendment rights. Sunstein has advocated everything from regulating the content of personal e-mail communications, to forcing nonprofit groups to publish information on their websites that is counter to their beliefs and mission.... If it were up to Obama and Sunstein, everything we read online - right down to our personal e-mail communications - would have to be inspected and approved by the federal government."

11. Van Jones -- President Obama's former White House Environmental Adviser ("Green Jobs Czar"). Mr. Jones remains a self-defined Communist community organizer from the San Francisco Bay area (Oakland, California). He is also an Whites-hating racist with a criminal arrest record, as well as a "9/11 Truther" true believer. The 9/11 Truther organizations proselytize that former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Richard Cheney either planned or knew about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks conducted by 19 Islamofascist members of Al-Qaeda who, aside from slamming a passenger jetliner into the Pentagon, did the same in New York City totally destroying the Twin Towers and killing almost 3,000 Americans.

When Mr. Jones, an ardent racist and Communist, was hired into the White House by "the other half of Barack's brain," Ms. Valerie Jarrett, she expressed overflowing praise in the press and in video-taped interviews for Mr. Jones and his work, noting that "we have been watching him for a long time. [11]

12. Carol M. Browner -- Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy. Ms. Browner is a Socialist sycophant of Al Gore's conclusion that the earth is going to evaporate tomorrow. A former EPA director, Ms. Browner is married to Leftist lobbyist Thomas Downey and remains an ardent Socialist activist. She is one of 14 leaders of Socialist International's, "Commission for a Sustainable World Society," which calls for "global governance."

As Van Jones was an admitted Communist, Ms. Browner is an admitted and very active Socialist. What more really need be said about her with reference to President Obama who has been fully informed of her moral relativity and anti-Americanism for years since she has hardly kept it secret from either her associates, the public, nor the press. [12]

13. John Holdren -- Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Other than Mr. Holdren's well known and oft repeated morally relativistic denial of American exceptionalism, one and only one thing need to be said here about President Obama's "Science" Czar - he is Barack Obama's twin on the matter of abortion and has advocated compulsory abortion. Here it is again: President Obama searched for, reached out, and chose as his chief "science advisor" a plasma physicist who advocates compulsory abortion.

As John Griffing wrote of Holdren in "Enough is Enough," for American Thinker:

...for a true outrage, consider new Czar of Science, John P. Holdren, who, in a stunning display of unabashed evil, has actively advocated "compulsory abortion":

There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated...It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.

If that doesn't send a chill down your spine, consider his words, "All the children who are born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the death of grown persons." Let that sink in: an American official supports forced abortion and the death of "grown persons." We know what that looks like. It has been official policy for years in Communist China.

President Obama quite literally has the single worst record of any elected official on the question of abortion. While in the Illinois legislature he single-handedly prevented that state's Born Alive Infant Protection Act from leaving his committee much less being made into law. As a result, for three more years until legislator Obama became U. S. Senator Obama, Illinois hospitals and doctors were permitted to allow otherwise healthy infants who survived an abortion to receive no medical attention whatsoever until they died. They were simply, and quite literally, "shelved." The evidence of Mr. Obama's actions and callous disregard for the lives of infants is overwhelming. [13]

14. Kevin Jennings -- President Obama's Safe Schools Czar. Jennings is a former schoolteacher who has very successfully advocated promoting homosexuality in schools, written about his past drug abuse, unashamedly and vituperatively expressed his utter contempt for religion, and detailed an incident in which he did not report to authorities his knowledge that an underage student told him he was having sex with older men - Jennings instead counseled the boy to "use a condom. " In 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, [Jennings] founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which now has over 40 chapters at schools nationwide. He has also published six books on gay rights and education...."

In the past, Mr. Jennings has praised Harry Hay, the frequent and vocal defender of NAMBLA - the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which promotes the legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men.

His organization, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, has successfully prodded some schools into making October the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) Month, as well as established November 28th as "Transgender Day of Remembrance."

None of this belongs in any school anywhere, any time, and the fact that the Obama Administration chooses to support such people with such goals and then put them in positions of great authority and power should make even the most dyed-in-the-wool middle-class liberal Democrats cringe at the depth of either their negligence, uncaring, or stupidity regarding the real Barack Hussein Obama.

And I bet all the teachers in America didn't know this - according to Mr. Jennings (at a New York University "Education Policy Breakfast):

"... you cannot be an effective teacher if you are not aware of how [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] biases can influence how you interact with your students. Pure and simple."

To which Mr. Jennings added,

"It should be impossible to graduate from NYU or any other school of education without coursework - required coursework - that address issues of [LGBT] bias in the classroom and how it might influence your teaching. [It] should be a graduation requirement."

In 1999, Mr. Jennings wrote the foreward for an elementary education instruction book, Queering Elementary Education, the description of which states that it examines "five broadly-defined areas in elementary education: foundational issues; social and sexual development; curriculum; the family; and gay/lesbian educators and their allies. It seeks to provide scholarly insights, pedagogical strategies, and curricular resources for use in schools. At the core of the book is the belief that public school educators have the responsibility to affirm sexual diversity..." In elementary school?

It is Jennings himself, Obama's "Safe-School Czar," who coined the term "safe school" as a euphemism for "pro-homosexual" school. Children's physical safety had nothing and has even less to do now with Mr. Jennings educational background, "expertise," or agenda. "Jennings was obviously chosen for this job because of the safe schools aspect... defining 'safe schools' narrowly in terms of 'safe for homosexuality'," says Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.

"Safe school" is hardly the only word commandeered by Jennings and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to support propagandizing his model "safe school" into mainstream elementary education. Others include, and parents should be alert to "seemingly innocuous terms as 'safe school,' 'anti-bullying,' 'safe space,' 'hate-free, 'tolerance,' 'respect differences,' 'be an ally,' 'no name calling day,' 'be who you are,' 'free to be fully me,' 'day of silence,' and so forth. If these terms are present [in school instructional materials], they are [probably] defined by Jennings, not Webster, and the accompanying curricular material will probably be objectionable. Jennings' jargon and the mythical bullying epidemic even showed-up in the recent Presidential address to school children."

The Obama Administration was certainly aware of these facts long before the President and Ms. Jarrett selected Mr. Jennings, just as they selected Van Jones, and all the other members of the Obama Administration discussed here.

This is the type of colossal lack of judgment the President of The United States has not merely chosen to surround himself with, but in fact personally displays every day.

Feeling any "safer" about your kids? [14]

15. Chai Feldblum - Obama nominee to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission who signed a manifest seeking, inter alia, to legalize polygamy ("to protect households in which there is more than one conjugal partner"). See, online petition entitled Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision For All Our Families and Relationships. Feldblum is an outspoken homosexual rights activist and Georgetown University law professor. She is "co-director of Workplace Flexibility 2010, which she described at [a] UCLA symposium as a homosexual rights group that aimed to change 'the American workplace and revolutionize social mores. This is a war that needs to be fought,'' Feldblum asserted, "'and it's not a war overseas where we are killing people in the name of liberating them." [15]

16. William Ayers -- Obama friend, neighbor, fellow board member, "respected" national educator, virulently anti-American, and dramatically unrepentant radical terrorist bomber. Mr. Ayers famously stated:

"I am a radical, Leftist, small 'c' Communist...Maybe I'm the last Communist who is willing to admit it.... The ethics of Communism still appeal to me."

Perhaps Mr. Ayers most notable statement was made to the New York Times in a story released on September 11, 2001:

"I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough,"

It has gradually come to light that Mr. Ayers, far from the casual acquaintance President Obama made him out to be during the 2008 election, is quite likely the real author of Mr. Obama's "autobiography," Dreams of My Father. [16]

Mr. Ayers approach to education is as authoritarian as is his approach to society as a whole - otherwise he would not have planted terrorist bombs in an effort to compel his personal beliefs upon the rest of society. As Sol Stern of City Journal wrote:

Ayers's influence on what is taught in the nation's public schools is likely to grow in the future. Last month, he was elected vice president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. Ayers won the election handily, and there is no doubt that his fellow education professors knew whom they were voting for. In the short biographical statement distributed to prospective voters beforehand, Ayers listed among his scholarly books Fugitive Days, an unapologetic memoir about his ten years in the Weather Underground. The book includes dramatic accounts of how he bombed the Pentagon and other public buildings.
....
Ayers's politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America's future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students. [17]

The Ayers-Obama Socialist-conversion mission carried out with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge's $100,000,000 was a total failure, producing zero results in student learning, but succeeded in massive transfers of wealth to Leftist, Socialist, and even the Communist causes of long-time Ayers ally, Mike Klonsky, a former S.D. S. leader, college professor and Director of the Small Schools Workshop. However, neither Mr. Ayers nor President Obama have given up on their radical Leftist agenda. [18]

Ayers is married to unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bernadine Dohrn who was once jailed for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating other Weather Underground members' robbery of a Brinks truck, in which a guard and two New York State Troopers were killed. Like her husband, she remains involved and influential in school programs.

For Mr. Ayers, Mr. Freeman, Mr. Jennings, Mr. Chu, and President Obama's Secretary of Education, yet another Chicagoan, Arne Duncan - and far too many others in the Obama Administration - education is solely about pursuing then mandating the radicalization of children through indoctrination in Leftist policies, "social justice" curricula, and Socialism itself in public schools.
____________________________________________________________

The Obama Administration is currently making thousands of federal bureaucratic appointments. Make no mistake. These people are about Socialism, and they are about power. Their power.
FOOTNOTES AND REFERENCES, AmericanThinker.com Read More......

Profits We Should Cheer

WASHINGTON POST, 7/30/2009 by Stephen L. Carter - The Quest for Profit Can Benefit Health Care: A specter is haunting America: the specter of profit. We have become fearful that somewhere, somehow, an evil corporation has found a way to make lots of money. ∴ Flash back three years. In 2006, Exxon Mobil announced the highest profit in the history of American corporate enterprise. Politicians and pundits stumbled over each other to call for an investigation and for some sort of confiscatory tax on the money the company earned. Profit, it seemed, was an evil, but large profit was even worse. ∴ Today, the debate on the overhaul of the health-care system sparks a shiver of deja vu. The leitmotif of the conversation about the coming shape of health insurance is that the villain is the system of private insurance. "For-profit" firms come under constant attack from activists and members of Congress. Read more at the Washington Post...

Hat tip: John Detweiler
John writes, "Something else to make you uneasy." Read More......

Alinsky's 12 Rules for Radicals

REFERENCE MATERIAL - SAL ALINSKY'S 12 RULES FOR RADICALS include notes [in parenthesis) by Craig Miyamoto, APR, Fellow Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), the largest professional organization of public relations specialists representing business, consulting firms, government, and associations.:

RULE 1: "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have." Power is derived from 2 main sources - money and people. "Have-Nots" must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)

RULE 2: "Never go outside the expertise of your people." It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. (Organizations under attack wonder why radicals don't address the "real" issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.)

RULE 3: "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy." Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

RULE 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

RULE 6: "A good tactic is one your people enjoy." They'll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They're doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid "un-fun" activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)

RULE 7: "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag." Don't become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)

RULE 8: "Keep the pressure on. Never let up." Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

RULE 9: "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself." Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists' minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)

RULE 10: "If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive." Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management's wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)

RULE 11: "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative." Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.) Read More......

About George Soros

Investors Business Daily has an interesting editorial collection on George Soros. From this central link you'll find these entries:

• George Soros & MoveOn.org
• The Soros Threat to Democracy
• George Soros: The Man, The Mind And The Money Behind MoveOn
• A Party Bought And Paid For

Read More......

PC Education: Columbus

The 2007 observence of Columbus Day is October 8th. Though humorous, this 2005 piece portrays the indoctrination which invades the classroom and shamefully undermines our nation through our children.

Exploring Columbus By Tom Purcell, Columnist
Published in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on October 9, 2005

"Dad, why does America celebrate Columbus Day?"

"Well, Billy, in 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed from Europe to America and founded the very first settlement in the New World. His arrival marks the beginning of America as we know it."

"But didn't he discover America by accident, dad?"

"Columbus believed the Earth was a sphere. He thought he could reach the Far East by setting off on a westward course. Though he stumbled upon what is now the Bahamas by accident, he was still a great explorer and a great man, Billy."

"A great man, dad, or a racist oppressor?"

"Pardon me, son?"

"When Columbus came to America, he brought with him the greed of the white European males who subsequently colonized America for the dough. They fought and killed the Indigenous Peoples who were already here and took their land and their gold. Columbus eventually died a very rich man."

"Well, Billy, an unfortunate part of human history involves countries invading their neighbors to take control. This has happened in many parts of the world, including Europe, which has a long history of war. But remember that Indigenous Peoples were also prone to war and fighting to expand their control well before Europeans arrived."

"Well, Columbus is also responsible for many germs and diseases that Europeans brought to America, causing untold suffering and death among the people who were here before us."

"Have you been drinking too much caffeine lately, Billy?"

"America's history of environmental destruction can also be laid at Columbus' feet, dad. As soon as the Europeans colonized America's pristine lands, they cut down the trees and plowed up the fields. Can you say soil erosion, dad?"

"Son, did I ever tell you that you take after your mother's side?"

"And what about slavery? It was the Europeans who created a flourishing slave trade in America. They did it to develop the land cheaply, so they could make giant profits. Columbus even made slaves out of some of the Indigenous Peoples who attacked him and his men."

"Son, do you remember where your mother hid the bourbon?"

"I'll tell you another thing, dad. The only reason we even celebrate Columbus Day is because he was Italian, and the day is also a celebration of Italian heritage. When FDR made Columbus Day official in 1934, he did it not just because Columbus discovered the New World, but because Italian immigrants in America represented millions of votes."

"Look, Billy, there are a lot of ways to look at what Christopher Columbus symbolizes. You can focus on the negative attributes, and there are some, or you can do what America has been doing for many years now: focus on the positive."

"Positive, dad?"

"Sure, Billy. Columbus represents the spirit of exploration, the spirit of pushing forward into the great unknown to find greater and better things. This has always been the spirit of America, the land of innovation and new ideas."

"What kind of ideas, dad?"

"How about the ideas of freedom and self-government, Billy? After Columbus opened a gateway to the New World, other European countries established colonies here, too. Eventually, some amazing historical figures would evolve in North America. They would create and fight for a way of life that has proved to be extremely successful - their ideas are still spreading and changing the world for the better."

"Really, dad?"

"Yes, son. The concept of freedom has taken root so solidly in America that people are free to criticize or praise anything, including whether or not Christopher Columbus was a hero or an ogre, or whether or not Columbus Day should still be celebrated in America. Now, do you have any other questions about history?"

"Sure, dad. Was Benjamin Franklin really a predatory male chauvinist womanizer?"

Tom Purcell, a free-lance writer, lives in Mt. Lebanon. You can visit him on the Web at www.TomPurcell.com Read More......

The History of Labor Day

Forbes.com, August 30, 2007 - Mark Lewis wrote,

Most of the world marks Labor Day on May 1 with parades and rallies. Americans celebrate it in early September, by heading to the beach or firing up the grill. Why the discrepancy? Here's a hint: The answer would have been a great disappointment to Frederick Engels.

Engels, the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, had high hopes for May Day, which originated in the United States. When the socialist-dominated organization known as the Second International jumped on the American bandwagon and adopted May 1 as International Labor Day, Engels confidently expected the proletariats of Europe and America to merge into one mighty labor movement and sweep capitalism into the dustbin of history.

Things didn't work out that way, of course, and the divergent Labor Day celebrations are part of the story. Continued...

Read More......