Wednesday, July 31, 2013

How inept is big government? »

How inept is big government? »:
I think the signs are clear that most of big government displays varying degrees of ineptness, from slightly to completely.  And over the years, the entire scale of government has moved relentlessly to the “completely” side of things.
Here’s a simple example of why few have any trust in government and even fewer believe what it says anymore.  In this case it has to do with security and immigration.  It has to do with basic competence.  It has to do with following and enforcing the law.  And it also has to do with a department of government which has done none of those things:
The Homeland Security Department has lost track of more than 1 million people who it knows arrived in the U.S. but who it cannot prove left the country, according to an audit Tuesday that also found the department probably won’t meet its own goals for deploying an entry-exit system.
The findings were revealed as Congress debates an immigration bill, and the Government Accountability Office’s report could throw up another hurdle because lawmakers in the House and Senate have said that any final deal must include a workable system to track entries and exits and cut down on so-called visa overstays.
The government does track arrivals, but is years overdue in setting up a system to track departures — a goal set in a 1996 immigration law and reaffirmed in 2004, but which has eluded Republican and Democratic administrations.
“DHS has not yet fulfilled the 2004 statutory requirement to implement a biometric exit capability, but has planning efforts under way to report to Congress in time for the fiscal year 2016 budget cycle on the costs and benefits of such a capability at airports and seaports,” GAO investigators wrote.
Why has it eluded both Republic and Democratic administrations? Basic incompetence coupled with bureaucratic resistance. A combination which leads to ossification – something we see more and more of as government grows more vast and inept. Also note that many of the problems we suffer today are of government’s making. Certainly if we have a means of logging arrivals into the country, having a system that tracks their exit just couldn’t be that tough to do. And DHS has had the mandate to do that since … 1996. 17 years. 17 years and nada.  Result?  We have no idea how many foreigners we have illegally in this country right now.  But they can track a Pakistani Taliban for days on end via drones.
Of course none of this should surprise anyone, because the federal government isn’t now nor has it ever really been that interested in enforcing immigration laws. When it does do so it is almost by whim.
Like I said, this is just one example of the legion of examples where big government exacerbates problems by being inept or just intransigent (or both) in the execution and enforcement of laws.  Executive departments really don’t pay that much attention to either the law or Congress.  And, as usual, there are no consequences for doing so.  The department charged with homeland security during a war on terror has lost track of a million foreigners that have traveled to this country.
And no one seems to care.
~McQ

The Founders' Greatest Fears About Democracy Are Playing Out »

The Founders' Greatest Fears About Democracy Are Playing Out »: Our Founders' greatest fear that pure democracy would inevitably destroy itself is being played out in two distinct dramas, both headed toward the same ending.

Black Politicians Mostly to Blame for Detroit's Demise »

Black Politicians Mostly to Blame for Detroit's Demise »: But at least we might be able to get a good sitcom out of it.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

ObamaCare Incents People to Work and Earn Less - Will Media Report It? »

ObamaCare Incents People to Work and Earn Less - Will Media Report It? »:
A new study by the insurance price comparison website Value Penguin finds that ObamaCare will actually incent some people to work and earn less money.
As a CNBC.com article on this subject is now prominently linked at the Drudge Report, one has to wonder if the ObamaCare-loving media will report it:
read more

Defunding: the Framers’ remedy for presidential lawlessness »

Defunding: the Framers’ remedy for presidential lawlessness »:
Two weeks ago, the House Appropriations Committee stripped the scandal ridden Internal Revenue Service of nearly one quarter of its 2014 budget as punishment for its targeting of political groups and its costly boondoggles.
Shockingly, Senate Democrats voted to increase the IRS’ budget.
Last week, numerous Republicans in both chambers of Congress threatened to cut off all funding for the federal government as of Oct. 1, in response to President Obama’s unconstitutional stance that he can pick and choose which parts of ObamaCare he will implement.
On July 3, the Obama administration disclosed that it would not implement ObamaCare’s employer mandate on Jan. 1, 2014, though the law says the mandate “shall” go into effect that day. The administration pretended it was no big deal.
But it violates the law and affects 10 million currently uninsured or underinsured workers whose employers would have been subject to the mandate. The cost of insuring these workers is shifted from employers to taxpayers, who foot the bill for subsidized insurance on the new ObamaCare exchanges. At an average cost of $5,290 per subsidized enrollee, according to the Congressional Budget Office, this will add billions to the cost of ObamaCare next year alone.
Two days later, another whopper. On July 5, the Obama administration revealed that it would also skip the health law’s requirement that applicants seeking taxpayer subsidies to pay for their insurance have their income and insurance eligibility verified. Welcome fraudsters; too bad again for taxpayers.
Obama does not have the authority to choose which parts of the law are enforced. In 1975, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously against President Nixon’s inflated claims that he could selectively carry out the law.
But going to court to keep presidents in line is slow and necessitates finding litigants to sue the president. The framers gave Congress a more practical way to resist a power-hungry president: defunding.
Defunding is precisely what members of Congress are supposed to do when a president breaks the law. It’s checks and balances in action. Two centuries ago, the chief architect of the Constitution James Madison declared in Federalist No. 58 that Congress’ authority over spending is the “most complete and effectual tool” to stop a president from grabbing more power than the Constitution allows.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee is taking a page out of Madison’s playbook. On July 17, Lee urged Congress to vote against any continuing resolution to fund the federal government after Sept. 30 as long as it funds ObamaCare.
“Laws are supposed to be made by Congress, not … (by) the president, who has now amended ObamaCare twice, once by saying individuals have to comply with the law during their first year but employers don’t, then in saying we aren’t even going to require people to prove their income.”
Lee said that if the administration is not prepared to fully enforce ObamaCare as enacted, it should agree to delay the entire law and remove its funding from the budget. Eleven fellow Republican senators and at least 60 Republican House members have signed on to Lee’s defunding stance.
Lee’s constitutional case is air tight. Yet the Democratic Party and Obama’s supporters in the media are trying to label the defunding strategy “government sabotage,” “radicalism,” and “obstructionism.” They need a refresher course on the Constitution.
Sadly, some Republicans are whining about the political consequences if Obama calls their bluff and allows the government to run out of money.
“They’re going to shut down the Grand Canyon,” Arizona Sen. John McCain warned, and he’ll hear about it from unhappy voters.
Several senators who originally signed on with Lee saw the political risk, lost their nerve, and removed their names. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., even called withholding funding “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”
There is nothing dumb about protecting the Constitution. Members of Congress took an oath to uphold it. If not now, when?
The more times this president is permitted to trample the Constitution, the more freedom we’ve lost.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York state and author of “Beating ObamaCare.”
The post Defunding: the Framers’ remedy for presidential lawlessness appeared first on Human Events.

The Eternal Mystery (Of the Liberal Mind) »

The Eternal Mystery (Of the Liberal Mind) »:
MSNBC’s Hayes: “Frustrating” That “Crime is Going Down” While “More People in Prison” – Greg Hengler
The guy is probably serious about his frustration. I live in San Francisco so I know a lot of educated, credentialed ignoramuses who are baffled at the notion that by removing criminals from the streets, crime goes down.
Why so baffled? Because this connection runs entirely against one of their cherished leftist fantasies that the only way to combat crime is to give potential criminals more state money. Besides, imprisonment is “cruel and unusual” punishment.

Marc Faber On Central Banker Actions: "Insane People Don't Realize They're Insane" »

Marc Faber On Central Banker Actions: "Insane People Don't Realize They're Insane" »:
While we know that the Fed will be forced to taper in the short-term as it desperately avoids the 'appearance' of outright monetization that a falling deficit will create, Marc Faber sums up the endgame perfectly in this clip: "I don’t think they will come to their senses for the simple reason that insane people don't realize that they are insane." Faber adds, "they think they’re doing a great job," and in fact they believe - in general - that "if anything, we need to do more, not less." The 'forced-taper-to-plunge-to-untaper' progression means it's going to get worse; as Faber notes, QE/printing will continued indefinitely "until the system breaks down." Having printed this much money with such dismal results, Faber concludes, "the Fed is completely clueless."
Faber covers a wide-range of topics in this excellent interview - from Fed insanity and cluelessness to Gold confiscation and from China's dishonesty to the destabilizing reality of Stability-hoping Keynesianism...



Will the Fed stop printing?
I don’t think they will end QE. I rather think they will have to increase it because as you print money or as you purchase assets, from a central banking point of view, it loses its impact over time. In order to keep the impact going, you have to essentially increase it. I believe that the Dovish members of the Fed will print more money. Especially after the resignation of Mr. Bernanke early next year, when he will be replaced, there will be even more Dovish members.
Never end?
... until the system breaks down. My view would be that there will be money printing, and the problem with money printing is always that you don’t control where it goes to.
On the money-printers coming to their senses?
I don’t think they will come to their senses for the simple reason that insane people don’t realize that they are insane. They think they’re doing a great job. I talk to these people from time to time, and I know some of them. If you have a serious discussion with them, they lean towards the view, “Had we not implemented the QE programs, we would be in the greatest depression ever, so we’ve done a fantastic job.” The view is also, “If anything, we need to do more, not less.”
On the Un-Taper:
I don’t pay much attention to what the Fed publishes. When you read their statements, they are completely confused and very vague. In other words, all is data-driven. If the stock market dropped ten, 20 percent, for sure there would be more QE programs.

On the other hand, if the economy is very strong, they may taper off somewhat. You get the picture. The worse the situation is in the US, whether regarding asset markets or the economy, the more QE there will be. The Fed doesn’t know anything else.
On China:
I think that for now, the US is still the dominant financial market and the dominant financial power. I think we have numerous problems in China, and I personally pay more attention to what is happening in China and in other emerging economies than to what Mr. Bernanke is saying.

The Chinese are not completely dishonest, but if you read between the lines of the hard-core statistics in China, in my view, they don’t match with the public statistics about GDP growth. The economy is growing at say, maximum 4 percent per annum, not 7.5 percent or 7.7 or 7.6 percent.
On the fallacy of central planning:
...we know what the result was of Stalin’s economic policies and so forth. The planning economy is a complete failure. But now, recently, they announced that they would also implement some macroeconomic policy decisions in structuring interest rates and monetary policies. They really think that they can steer the economy and that they can steer markets. Milton Friedman has written about this extensively. He thinks the introduction of essentially the Federal Reserve and with fiscal measures, the economic volatility in the US in the 20th Century was much higher than in the 19th Century, and this is correct.

One of the goals of so-called Keynesian policies would be to stabilize economic activity. In other words, you don’t have huge business cycle fluctuations and you have relative price stability. But please, tell me, where is economic stability nowadays, and where is price stability? Oil prices move up and down like crazy, home prices move up and down like crazy, and the stock market does the same. There’s far less stability than there ever was before, complementary of the Federal Reserve and essentially of the US Treasuries fiscal policies.
How does it all end?
I’m not thinking. I’m convinced. It will end very badly. It doesn’t mean it has to be tomorrow..

I think that is a very good question. Like the aristocracy in Europe in the 18th Century, they didn’t give up just the power. They kept that power, same as the aristocracy in Russia in the 19th Century. They didn’t give up the power. Eventually, they were slaughtered. I believe what will eventually happen is that you have a financial collapse of dimensions so bankers can’t do anything.

I don’t know what the end game will be, and whether we’ll still be alive or whether we’ll be in wars or in revolutions as the worst. That’s why I want to hold some physical gold.
On Gold confiscation:
Yes, that’s a good question. I wonder what will happen one day. Let’s take the worst-case scenario. We have either a social unrest, a revolution, or war. Governments decide, “Oh, the price of gold is going up substantially, let’s take it away from people.” In other words, you expropriate it.

There’s no point to hold physical gold somewhere in the sky. I would hold some physical gold in my proximity. In other words, I own some in Thailand and some in Hong Kong. I still have too much in Europe, but over time, I will move it to Asia.

I think it will, at that stage, not matter very much where you hold your gold, except it may matter where you hold your gold in terms of sovereign state. My sense is that the Asian countries are less likely to take the gold away than Western countries.
The full transcript available here at Sprott Money News.

Juan Williams hammers Al Sharpton, Michael Eric Dyson: ‘Complete frauds’ »

Juan Williams hammers Al Sharpton, Michael Eric Dyson: ‘Complete frauds’ »: FNC's 'The Five' panelist takes issue with leaders in the 'so-called civil rights community'

Expert: Decline of Marriage Leads to Bad Outcomes for Children, Adults »

Expert: Decline of Marriage Leads to Bad Outcomes for Children, Adults »:
W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project, called Tuesday for a renewed commitment to fatherhood and marriage in America to curb the decline of stable, intact families.
Wilcox spoke at the Heritage Foundation about the array of social science research supporting the positive impacts of fatherhood on men and children in his new book Gender and Parenthood: Biological and Social Scientific Perspectives.
Men in residential marriages, on average, have lower levels of testosterone—which in high amounts is linked to aggression and infidelity—earn more than their counterparts without children, and are less likely to be depressed, Wilcox said.
Children in turn benefit from the influence of fathers in the home, according to the research compiled by Wilcox.
Sons who have quality relationships with their fathers are less likely to engage in delinquent behavior, on average, and daughters with the same relationships are about half as likely to become pregnant as teenagers, compared to girls raised by single mothers or who have poor relationships with their fathers.
That does not mean “exceptions” do not exist, Wilcox said.
“I was raised by a single mom. I think I turned out OK,” he said.
Yet “on average, fatherhood is a transformative experience for men, and, on average, kids are more likely to benefit when they have their father in the home,” he added.
The share of children born to moderately educated mothers outside of marriage rose to 44 percent by the late 2000s, compared to just 13 percent in the 1980s, according to the National Marriage Project.
Conversely, only 6 percent of highly educated mothers’ children were born out of marriage by the late 2000s, suggesting that the drop in marriage rates has exacerbated inequality.
Wilcox pointed to the “capstone” idea of marriage that prioritizes personal fulfillment and financial status and tends to result in delayed marriages as a potential cause of the decline in marriage rates, as well as cultural cues imparted by celebrities. Actress Jennifer Aniston once asserted that “women are realizing it more and more knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child.”
“This message that fathers and marriage are not important has not been lost among today’s young adults,” Wilcox said.
There’s just one problem with the idea that any family structure is as good as any other—it’s not true,” Wilcox said.
Wilcox proposed legislative tweaks such as eliminating the marriage tax penalty for low-income couples and tripling the tax credit for children under age three, but marriage advocates must also craft better narratives in Hollywood and the media, he said.
Both moms and dads discipline their kids in distinct and mutually beneficial ways on average, and they have the opportunity to succeed as a result of the two different approaches, he said.
“Conservatives will make the argument that it’s all about family structure and marriage. It’s not just about family structure,” he said. “It’s about fathers engaging their kids.”

Opposition To Sen. Mike Lee’s Defunding Obamacare Demonstrates Republicans Have Been Castrated »

Opposition To Sen. Mike Lee’s Defunding Obamacare Demonstrates Republicans Have Been Castrated »:

What do you do when the people you vote for no longer represent you? As the days of America’s fundamental transformation carry us further and further into the abyss, more and more Americans are waking to the debacle that is Obamacare. Ironically as the list of those opposing grows among the citizens, the ones we voted for based on the promise of repeal must have been castrated or something because they have all but jumped ship on the repeal efforts. Why? Knowing the progressives that call themselves Republicans today I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn they are playing a radical game to keep us confused and allow the blame for the coming “train wreck” to fall on the shoulders of Republican Party. Would that really surprise anyone who is keeping their eye on the ball? The Republicans in general allow themselves to be blamed for everything because they are afraid of not being liked. To them saving the country is about as imperative as a high school popularity contest.
Once again I find myself regretting my support for Tom Coburn (R-OK) and other so called “Republicans” as they take a lead role in opposing Senator Mike Lee’s (R-UT) legislation to defund the increasingly unpopular healthcare law. Many Republicans are calling these efforts foolish because they believe it will destroy the Republican Party. I have news for you Republicans:
You are destroying the Republican Party by being cowards and failing to articulate the difference between real conservatism that defends the individual, and the Marxist based liberalism that is responsible for the destruction of Detroit. Failure to realize this and take the lead in defending freedom makes you more responsible for the destruction of this nation than the liberal democrats. Why? Because we expect that from them, you are supposed to be the checks and balances against the authoritative statist position the democrats represent. You have a lot of nerve as far as I am concerned. You play the game the liberals play by allowing yourself largesse off the public treasury and then have the audacity to snub your nose at us when faced with the obvious mandate you have been given. That’s fine; you can pack your bags now because you are leaving next fall.
The biggest problem with the republicans is that they fall in to the game of “scheming” and planning, not realizing that the liberals have mastered the tactic of making everything stick to them. They actually believe that once Obamacare is fully implemented the momentum for repeal will shift and they will be able to seize the moment. The momentum for repeal is gaining now and they are not seizing any “moment;” rather, they are showing their constituencies their true colors-yellow. They are showing America that they no longer have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to a 1960′s radical who believes in socialism because he is a cry baby who thinks everything is unfair. So in a misguided effort to show they can be fair they are letting him get away with everything he wants, like crybabies usually do.
I think they are right in assuming that the momentum will shift in favor of repeal after its implementation; however, that is when it will become downright impossible to repeal. Whatever freebies that are involved will likely offset the negative effects for many people making repeal efforts appear to be, for all practical purposes, “Big evil Republicans trying to take away poor people’s healthcare.” Think about it, the majority of people want it repealed now and they are afraid to do it, wait until later down the road when it becomes one of the only viable options for obtaining coverage.
I would also like to know what they are going to do about the little IRS issue. In case you have forgotten, the IRS, the agency responsible for policing Obamacare has not only just been caught targeting Obama’s political opposition, but they have been hiring new agents and arming themselves as well. So, failure to repeal this beast puts the Republican Party responsible for whatever ill effects will come from this madness. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Democrat’s bill. These ding dongs posing as republicans have lost their cajones and haven’t even put an honest effort into repealing it. It would be one thing if there was an obvious tooth and nail effort but they went out with a whimper not a bang. Let them know what you think America.
The post Opposition To Sen. Mike Lee’s Defunding Obamacare Demonstrates Republicans Have Been Castrated appeared first on Freedom Outpost.

The media as a propaganda machine for Democrats »

The media as a propaganda machine for Democrats »:
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/354730/print
By  John Fund
Yesterday, CNN announced it was joining the parade of film projects on Hillary Clinton in the run-up to her likely campaign for president in 2016. It will produce a feature-length documentary, directed by liberal filmmaker Charles Ferguson, for release in theaters and then later show it on the network. 
It joins two other projects on Hillary that have been announced recently: a theatrical film called Rodham about Hillary’s days as a young lawyer on the Nixon House impeachment committee and a four-hour mini-series on Hillary starring Diane Lane that will appear on NBC. Politico reported that the sudden pile-on to produce Hillary projects even prompted a source close to Clinton to accuse CNN of focusing on Hillary to simply turn a fast buck. “I don’t know if I’m appalled or impressed,” the source told Politico. “Either way, they have some explaining to do on how they’re going to manage the conflict between news standards and the profit imperative. I’m not sure they know.”
Many people aren’t sure if the makers of the Hillary projects know the many minefields they will have to cross. 
What caught my eye when NBC announced its mini-series last Saturday was that it would only be covering Hillary’s life from the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998 onwards. So Lane, who is eye-stoppingly beautiful at 48 years old, will only be portraying Hillary from the age of 50 to her current age of 66 and later. It didn’t make any sense till I realized that airbrushing the first half-century of the former First Lady’s life away meant the pro-Hillary filmmakers wouldn’t have to deal with the messy collection of scandals she was involved in during her husband’s first term, from Whitewater to Travelgate to FBI Filegate to controversies over what a federal judge called a “cover-up” of her health-care task force’s records.
Bob Greenblatt, the head of NBC Entertainment, is promising his mini-series will be “even-handed” in covering Hillary, telling reporters: “I don’t think she will endorse it.” 
But he certainly doesn’t want to talk more about how he will ensure that. He didn’t respond to my request for an interview, just as he declined to talk with me back in 2003 when he was director of entertainment at Showtime, the pay cable network. 
Back then, the controversy I wanted to talk with him about was his decision to have Showtime air The Reagans, a TV movie on Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s life originally bought by CBS. The New York Timesobtained a copy of the script and pointed out several scenes the Times called “historically questionable.” Ronald Reagan was depicted more or less acknowledging he was an informer for the Hollywood blacklist during the McCarthy era. Another showed Nancy Reagan begging her husband to help AIDS patients only to be told, “They that live in sin shall die in sin.” Lou Cannon, Reagan’s most prolific biographer and no right-winger, scoffed at the film saying the blacklisting charge was “really wrong” and that “Reagan was not intolerant.” 
The backlash promoted Barbra Streisand — whose husband, James Brolin, played Reagan in the film — to claim the ensuing controversy had been whipped up by the Drudge Report and Republicans who couldn’t stomach the exposure of “the more unpleasant truths about his character and presidency.”  
But CBS couldn’t defend the film against charges it was pure, nasty fiction. CBS president Les Moonves maintained the rough cut he saw wasn’t the version the network had promised viewers. “We thought it had a very specific point of view that we thought was contrary to what we planned to air.” He told Daily Variety that his decision not to use it “was a moral decision, not an economic or a political one.” He dumped the film in the lap of CBS-owned Showtime, where Greenblatt agreed to air it.
Greenblatt held firm against requests he edit the “historically questionable” parts of the film, whose plot line can be summarized as “President Fuddy Duddy Dominated by Mommie Dearest.” His one concession was to take out the mean-spirited AIDS line attributed to Reagan. “That is the one political give that we agreed to,” Greenblatt told the Boston Globe. He also arranged for a panel discussion to follow the film that featured both Lou Cannon and AIDS activist Hilary Rosen.
The Reagans garnered mediocre ratings, failing to break the top 40 cable shows the week it aired. But at least at 180 minutes it covered all of Reagan’s life from young actor to his dotage. At the same 180 minutes, NBC’s mini-series on Hillary will cover just 15 years of her tumultuous life.
I have no doubt that NBC’s Hillary epic will do far better than The Reagans. Let’s just hope that Greenblatt sticks to his commitment that the film will be “even-handed.” The last time he green-lighted a film on a controversial political subject he fell well short of that mark. 

How Communists Manipulate Racial Issues – the “National Question” »

How Communists Manipulate Racial Issues – the “National Question” »:
New Zeal
Race is one of the communist movement’s most powerful weapons.
redsnare
Most conservatives understand that the left is always willing to stir up racial animosity. What they don’t understand is how organized and systematic this process is.
Communists all over the world deliberately exploit racial and ethnic differences for revolutionary ends.
In Australia, the communists target the native Aborigines. In Finland, they target the Samic people (Lapps). In Sri Lanka, it is the Tamils. In Argentina, it is the Mapuche Indians. In the United States, it is the Southern Blacks, the Hispanics of the Southwest, the Indian tribes all over and the native peoples of Hawaii. This technique is of course also used with Islamic minority populations all over the planet – the Philippines, Thailand, Britain, France, Scandinavia, Germany and the United States being obvious examples. Even Scottish nationalism, Irish sectarianism and Quebecois separatism are examples of this deliberate strategy.
In my country, New Zealand, it is the native Maori – a people ethnically and racially similar to native Hawaiians, comprising about 15% of our population, who are the main target.
Here, my friend Reuben Chapple, shows how the local communists have long worked to manipulate New Zealand Maoris for revolutionary ends.
Please read his thesis, then compare it to what is happening in your own country. I’m sure you will see parallels.
All Ideas Have a Pedigree
The place of those of Maori descent in New Zealand life is now an immense political, social and economic issue. This has come about in the first instance because, in the words of Dr Elizabeth Rata, “liberals of both the Left and the Right [have] embraced biculturalism with … religious-like commitment.”
waitangi2
All ideas have a pedigree.
The ideological underpinnings of identity politics trace back to the early 20th Century writings of Communist revolutionaries Lenin and Stalin on a topic they called “The National Question.”
Around 1905, Lenin and Stalin noted that Tsarist Russia consisted not just of ethnic Russians, but upwards of 80 formerly tribal subject peoples, conquered by the Tsars over the preceding 500 years and forcibly Russified. To expand the Bolshevik support base, these peoples were promised “the right to manage their own affairs,” “the right to self-determination,” “the right to speak, read, write, use, and be taught in their own language” etc.
After World War I, the multi-ethnic empires of Austro-Hungary and Czarist Russia to which the National Question was first applied to stir up revolution were no more. Lenin and Stalin then directed the National Question towards undermining the hold of European nations over their colonial possessions, so as to deprive them of sources of cheap labour, raw materials, and markets for finished goods.
Starting in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Communists all over the world were instructed to promote the independence aspirations of minority ethnic groups so as to bring them into conflict with the status quo, undermining social cohesion, breaking up nations and dependencies into warring factions, and leading to eventual socialist control.
Locally, the Communist Party of New Zealand (“CPNZ”) soon identified a minority strand of Maori opinion centred on the Tainui, Tuwharetoa and Tuhoe tribes that had always favoured reversion to tribalism, not engagement with the modern world. The CPNZ ran in the 1935 General Election on a platform that included “self-determination for the Maoris [sic] to the point of complete separation.”
You heard it here first.
In the 1930s, the CPNZ had little success with this line. Maori were a predominately rural people and had little contact with Communists, who were mostly found in urban areas with universities and a substantial manufacturing base. This soon changed. Between 1945 – 1975, Maori underwent what University of Waikato demographers Pool and Pole describe as “the most rapid urbanisation of any group of people, anywhere.” This brought Maori flooding into the universities and trade unions, the CPNZ’s main recruiting grounds. The Communists who’d begun colonising the our universities to use them as factories of ideological reproduction had, by the mid-1960s, achieved critical mass in many departments, especially those specialising in the study of society.
Their growing dominance on faculty hiring committees allowed them to systematically exclude anyone holding alternative views. Controlling the universities is based on the writings of Antonio Gramsci, yet another disreputable Communist held up as an intellectual icon by the academic Left. In the 1920s, Gramsci reasoned that the capitalist ruling class controlled the social discourse, meaning the “subordinate classes” [Gramsci widened this from Marx's "the workers" to include women, ethnic minorities, alternative sexualities] lacked all awareness of their own class oppressions. Revolution must therefore first take place on the level of consciousness. This would occur with the formation of a body of intellectuals who would take over the Academy as a pulpit for mass-scale indoctrination. Ideally, these intellectuals would come from the “subordinate classes,” but would also include those from the “dominant classes” who could be induced to switch sides.
Gramsci’s adherents embedded themselves within our universities with the express agenda of helping their students to understand that the major social sciences, including geography, economics, sociology, history, political science, anthropology, and psychology, were not neutral and impartial. They were instead instruments of race, gender and class oppression. These views are now considered “mainstream” in the Western Academy.
Liberal arts students were told they were learning “progressive” new ideas about race, gender and class, not Communism. They were programmed with all the principles of Communism without the label then flattered for their cleverness in accepting the programming. If you told them they were Marxists or Communists, they’d respond with a pitying smile, roll their eyes, and accuse you of “seeing Reds under the bed.”
Most are not Communists. A small cadre of Communist converts derives a sense of superiority from knowing they are manipulating the situation. The vast majority are the fellow-travelling “Pinks” once referred to by Lenin as “useful idiots..” Having internalised the system of values upon which their membership of “Club Virtue” depends, these people display a strong emotional resistance to having it questioned. If you disagree with them you are racist, sexist, fascist, misogynist, homophobic or just plain stupid.. Rational discourse with such people is impossible.
After graduating, this mass of useful idiots slithered forth from the academy into the media, education system, trade unions, Labour Party, entertainment industry, churches and other institutions that shape society’s governing ideas. Our universities thus served as a transmission belt into wider society for a raft of Communist narratives, including that of Maori as an “oppressed” people. As a result of what Communists refer to as “pressure from below,” the political centre of gravity has moved steadily leftward over several generations.
Then there is what Communists call “pressure from above.” Following the creation of the United Nations in 1945, Communists on its various committees and workgroups began to drip-feed National Question ideology into the fabric of that organisation. By 1960, the UN General Assembly had adopted the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. This stated that all peoples have a “right to self-determination” and proclaimed that “colonialism should be brought to a speedy and unconditional end.”
Over several decades, this position morphed into the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (“the UN Declaration”). New Zealand’s recent adoption of the UN Declaration is not binding and lacks an enforcement mechanism. Nonetheless, this document is far from harmless. The Declaration’s lofty phrases on the rights of indigenous people to self-determination, to maintain their own languages and cultures, to protect their natural and cultural heritage, and manage their own affairs, have further emboldened the Maori Sovereignty movement.
A few decades ago, anyone peddling identity politics would have been regarded as dangerously deluded. Now, through the Communist tactic of “pressure from above” by the UN and “pressure from below” by ethnic nationalists and their moral preening liberal enablers, the topic has been successfully mainstreamed.
The presumptions of the Maori Sovereignty/bicultural movement — that mixed-race New Zealanders with a self-selected monocultural identity are somehow entitled to separate, different, or superior rights because some of their ancestors happened to be here first – now stand revealed for what they are: a long-running Communist subversion strategy designed to substitute group rights for the individual equality in citizenship that provides for a peaceful, free society in which every citizen holds an equal share.

Liberals' moral cover for immoral behavior »

Liberals' moral cover for immoral behavior »:
There are many liberals who lead thoroughly decent lives. And there are conservatives who do not.
But that is not the whole issue.
There is something about liberalism that is not nearly as true about conservatism. The further left one goes, the more one finds that the ideology provides moral cover for a life that is not moral. While many people left of center lead fine personal lives, many do not. And left-wing ideals enable a person to do that much more than conservative ideals do.
There is an easy way to demonstrate this.
If a married – or even unmarried – conservative congressman had texted sexual images of himself to young women he did not even know, he would have been called something Anthony Wiener has not been called – a hypocrite.
Why? Because conservatives – secular conservatives, not only religious conservatives – are identified with moral values in the personal sphere, and liberals are not. Liberals rarely called Bill Clinton a hypocrite for his extramarital affair while president. George W. Bush would have been pilloried as such.
Simply put, we do not generally judge personal conduct the same when it comes to liberals and conservatives.
Both liberals and conservatives know this. As a result, as noted, liberal social positions can provide moral cover for immoral behavior in a way that conservative positions cannot.
Though there are many sincere liberals, it is likely that this ability to provide moral cover for a less than moral life is one source of liberalism’s appeal.
I first thought about this when I saw how the left-wing students at my graduate school, Columbia University, behaved. Aside from their closing down classes, taking over office buildings and ransacking professors’ offices, I saw the way in which many of them conducted themselves in their personal lives. Most of them had little sense of personal decency and lived lives of narcissistic hedonism. Women who were involved with leftist groups have told of how poorly they were treated. And one suspects that they would have been treated far better by conservative, let alone religious, men on campus.
My sense was that the radicals’ commitment to “humanity,” to “peace,” and to “love” gave them license to feel good about themselves without having to lead a good life. Their vocal opposition to war and to racism provided them with all the moral self-esteem they wanted.
Consider the example of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. He had been expelled from college for paying someone to take his exams. His role in the death of a woman with whom he spent an evening would have sent almost anyone without his family name to prison – or would have at least resulted in prosecution for negligent homicide. And he spent decades using so many women in so public a way that stories about his sex life were routinely told in Washington. Read the 9,000-word 1990 article in GQ by Michael Kelly, who a few years later became the editor of the New Republic.
When this unimpressive man started espousing liberal positions, speaking passionately about the downtrodden in society, it recalled the unimpressive students who marched on behalf of civil rights, peace and love.
It is quite likely that Ted Kennedy came to believe in the positions that he took. But I also suspect that he found espousing those positions invaluable to his self-image and to his public image: “Look at what a moral man I am after all.” And liberal positions were all that mattered to the left and to the liberal media that largely ignored such lecherous behavior as the “waitress sandwich” he made in a Washington, D.C., restaurant with another prominent liberal, former Sen. Chris Dodd.
In addition to knowing that liberal positions provide moral cover for immoral personal behavior, liberals know that their immoral behavior will be given more of pass than exactly the same behavior would if done by a conservative.
Women’s groups provided Bill Clinton with enormous moral capital because he supported their feminist agenda. One leading feminist famously said she would be happy to get on her knees and pleasure Clinton thanks to his pro-choice position on abortion.
Conservative politicians have the same sex drive as liberal politicians, the same marital problems and the same ubiquitous temptations and opportunities. And some will therefore engage in extramarital sex. But every conservative politician knows that should he be caught, his positions on issues not only do not provide moral cover for his conduct, those very positions condemn it. There is no benefit to the conservative sinner in being a conservative. There is great benefit to the liberal sinner in being a liberal.

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Monday, July 29, 2013

Pols' character deficit: Can the republic endure it? »

Pols' character deficit: Can the republic endure it? »:
The sexting scandal of Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman and current New York mayoral candidate, puts into focus the importance of character to public service.
Weiner’s texts, tweets and photos show not just a tawdry person but a risk-taking, deceitful individual who continued his serial texting and lied about it even as he prepared to run again for office.
His wife, Huma Abedin, is standing by her man and expects the public to defer to her judgment as to his fitness for office.
It is Abedin’s personal business as to whether she will forgive and support Weiner, but it is presumptuous and wrongheaded for her or Weiner’s supporters to lecture voters about how they should exercise their prerogative in assessing his suitability.
This bizarre notion that we should separate our public officials’ private behavior from their public lives gained alarming credibility during the Clinton years, when the president’s enablers adamantly insisted that all of his improper behavior was private and of no concern to the public.
“It’s a private matter involving sex,” they chanted, attempting to immunize even Clinton’s felonious perjury from investigation because the underlying facts about which he testified and lied “concerned a private matter about sex.”
They used the same mantra to paint as private, irrelevant and innocuous his episodes of oral sex in the Oval Office with a young intern – a textbook example of sexual harassment because of the power disparities between those involved.
In this postmodern age, many – especially secular liberals and partisan Democrats – are all too eager to demand that private and public character be separated. All that should matter is whether a public official’s policies, especially economic policies, are successful.
Common sense, experience and fundamental ethics tell us it’s folly to believe we can separate a politician’s private character from his public performance – that the success of an official’s policies is all that should matter.
Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias observed: “We know that the premise of privatization is flawed because who we are in public is determined by what we have learned and cherished in private. … One cannot help but wonder what would have happened to the United States if a man of Lincoln’s character had not been president at her most painful time of internal strife as brother fought against brother. … It is a mindless philosophy that assumes that one’s private beliefs have nothing to do with public office. Does it make sense to entrust those who are immoral in private with the power to determine the nation’s moral issues and, indeed, its destiny? One of the most dangerous and terrifying trends in America today is the disregard for character as a central necessity in a leader’s credentials. The duplicitous soul of a leader can only make a nation more sophisticated in evil.”
Indeed, the framers understood the vital importance of our leaders’ virtue and character to the success of the Constitution and the very endurance of the republic. John Adams famously said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Author Joseph Ellis, in his book “Founding Brothers,” makes the same point poignantly in discussing Alexander Hamilton’s relationship with Aaron Burr: “The problem … was that the putative barrier between personal and political criticism, or private and public behavior, kept getting overwhelmed by real choices. Personal character was essential in order to resist public temptations.” And: “Character mattered because the fate of the American experiment with republican government still required virtuous leaders to survive. Eventually, the United States might develop into a nation of laws and established institutions capable of surviving corrupt or incompetent public officials. But it was not there yet. It still required honorable and virtuous leaders to endure.”
Ellis’ observations are profound, except that he seems to fail to understand what the framers grasped: that no matter how brilliant the Constitution, no matter how developed we become as “a nation of laws and established institutions,” we could not permanently survive a ruling class that is bereft of respect for its founding principles and the rule of law or is of consistently dubious character.
The private behavior of our public officials matters because it is a reflection of their character, and their character will strongly influence their public actions. And their obedience to the Constitution and rule of law matters; indeed, it is essential for the endurance of the republic.
Anthony Weiner aside, when we have a president of the United States who daily demonstrates his disrespect for our founding principles and routinely flouts the rule of law, it is devastating to our liberties.
When Barack Obama acts unilaterally outside the scope of his constitutional authority to issue executive orders to implement provisions of the Dream Act or environmental rules over Congress’ objection or to delay implementation of Obamacare and then scoffs dismissively when asked whether he consulted lawyers on his authority to do so, he is out of control.
If we care about the republic, we have to care about the character of its public officials.
Do not get lost in the sordid aspects of the Weiner affair and allow them to obscure your focus on the larger issues of character and respect threatening our republic today.

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College And The Cancer Of Political Correctness »

College And The Cancer Of Political Correctness »:
globe 300x200 College and the Cancer of Political Correctness
Former Obama czar and now Harvard genius Cass Sunstein is lamenting over the lack of American students’ interest in science and math. Sunstein is right in noting that kids arrive in college with poor preparation in the sciences – I might add in bad physical shape because their high school PE programs were cut, their corpus collosi challenged because their right brain development in music and art programs were cut to make room for the political correctness of phony racial diversity, gender equality, sexual proclivity and hate America themes. And they expect kids to be motivated to subject themselves to real disciplines?
I think what Sunstein and the rest of the “progressive” crowd miss is the attitude base of today’s education process. Students are hammered with all the evils of American hegemony and destroying the earth with our technology. Schools under guidance from DC promote Godless political correctness in all its evil forms, including youthful guilt trips. The clergy-discoverers were likely motivated by God’s command in Genesis – “subdue the earth – be fruitful and multiply…” That doesn’t mean beat it to death, it means search, discover, refine, apply and bring forth the fruit of products, processes and opportunities for all to expand their horizons by creativity and service – giving glory to God – the only entity that can handle it! That’s called Stewardship – the opposite of EPA regulations written by ignoramuses!
These are the “progressive solutions” – see a challenge – centralize it. See it isn’t working, throw money at it. See it still isn’t working – throw more money and write new draconian rules and regulations, ad nauseum.  If that isn’t insanity for the sake of power, just what is? Of course, its also job security for non-performers expecting cushy perks for the rest of their lives – until their idiot-run cities like Detroit and Stockton go bankrupt.
Why would a student become fired up about science and technology when his education process has laid a guilt trip on him for even thinking about it? At the world famous Bakersfield Relay For Life, I fell in to walk with a young black woman and her son. She, like me was a cancer survivor. I asked her son what he wanted to be when he grew up. A nice, well-mannered kid, his answer shocked me. He said, “I want to become a lawyer so I can sue corporations!”
As an engineer, I’m a lousy structural designer, but a pretty good innovator currently holding forth some very fine “green” technologies for water, energy and environmentally pure applications. These are “very fine” because they actually reduce costs and eliminate the kind of chemical hazards that require a safety shower nearby in case a worker gets soaked with iodine or acid. Do we get an ounce of encouragement from the environmental gurus on government payrolls? No way! It falls right back to good old free enterprise, salesmanship and problem solving.
When President George H. W. Bush promised to shut down the Department of Education then caved to the “progressives” of both parties, he missed his chance for true greatness. The education process would have been returned where it belongs and competence and competition are the highest – to the parents and the local community. Now we’re stuck with three major messes all brought on by the Federal Government interfering where the Constitution forbids it to go: Health, Education and Welfare – the playground of eugenicists and totalitarians.
“Times they are a’changing!”
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  2. The Organized Destruction Of America Through Political Correctness Being a man in my mid-forties, raised in a pre-political...

Filner/Weiner: where are the “war on women” accusations? »

Filner/Weiner: where are the “war on women” accusations? »:
George Will brought up a very good point on ABC’s This Week this Sunday.  When discussing Democrats Bob Filner and Anthony Weiner and their current problems, Will uttered the following:
"If these two people, [Mayor Bob] Filner in San Diego and [Anthony] Weiner here, were Republicans, this would be a part of a lot of somber sociology in the media about the Republican war on women."
Who has heard any hint of that?  Anyone?  Are you seeing it in the media?  Given how the left and Democrats try to define the “war on women” would they really not include these two under that definition?
By the way, the panel on This Week got a huge cackle out of Will’s utterance, because, you know, obviously his square peg just doesn’t fit the round hole they have conjured in their minds.
~McQ

Obama dismisses his phony scandals, but hails his phony recovery »

Obama dismisses his phony scandals, but hails his phony recovery »:
Our 152,000 combined followers on Twitter (click here for that) and on Facebook (then click here to subscribe to that) know that on weekday afternoons we regularly share a selection of that evening's late-night jokes before broadcast.
Usually, we publish a collection of these jokes at the start of each week.
Letterman: So, Anthony Weiner has apologized for this new scandal. He also apologized for the next one. And the next one after that.
Fallon: British Royal Birth: Kate Middleton's baby weighs about eight pounds. Americans asked, 'How much is that in dollars?'
Conan: At their press conference, Anthony Weiner's wife said she will stand by her husband. Especially when he goes on the computer.
Leno: In a GQ interview, VP Joe Biden says he can die a happy man never having been president. You know what? So can we!
Conan: The other day at LAX, Kanye West punched a photographer. Apparently, Kanye got mad at the guy for not taking his picture.
Conan: The TSA says passengers can soon pass through security without taking their shoes off if they pay an extra $85. That explains the TSA's new motto, "We catch terrorists who don't have an extra $85 on them."
Conan: Anyone here go to Comic-Con? I was going to go, but I was stopped by security for "Possession of a Wife and a Job."
Conan: Britain's says it will outlaw "extreme porn." Of course, it Britain, "extreme porn" means the Queen waving without a glove.
Conan: A new study finds the happiest ages are 23 and 69. And the happiest person of all--a 69-year-old dating a 23-year-old.
Fallon: Eliot Spitzer is on the show tonight! He'll only be here for about five minutes, but we're charging him for the full hour.
Leno: Lots of celebrating underway at Buckingham Palace tonight over the new royal baby. I just hope they're able to get up for work tomorrow.
Leno: Can you believe all the publicity over Britain's new royal baby? Unbelievable. You'd think Kim Kardashian and Kanye West were having a kid.
Leno: Antonio Morrison has been suspended from the University of Florida football team after his second arrest in one month. You know what that means? This guy is NFL-ready.
Letterman: A new Batman and Superman movie is coming. I've seen the script. Tired. Batman is the neatnik and Superman is the slob.
Conan: Experts predict the new royal baby could............

Is Anthony Weiner a Psychopath? »

Is Anthony Weiner a Psychopath? »:
Using the alias Carlos Danger, Anthony Weiner is at it again. Having got caught two years ago sending an explicit picture of himself to a woman via Twitter, this last week Weiner again became embroiled in a scandal amidst a fledgling New York City mayoral campaign. This time Weiner admitted having engaged in online, sexual relationships with up to potentially ten different women.  For most of us seeing this story, is it easy to react with disgust, disdain, and indigence – this is a bad guy doing bad things, forcing his wife to stand by him yet again in an awkward press conference.
But to me that is just 1% of the story. The other 99% concerns why would he do these behaviors again?  After all, you don’t become a congressman without some manner of intelligence and common sense. So if we assume Weiner is a smart guy, knows he is a public figure, and realizes how devastating getting caught for his indiscretions would be, why would he do the same behaviors over and over again? From a psychological perspective, there are three distinct, yet potentially overlapping, explanations.
  1. He is a sex addict. Though disputed in medicine and psychology as a legitimate addiction, it seems possible Weiner could be addicted to sex, going to extreme lengths to perpetuate sexual relationships with many women at the same time. Wiener denies he is a sex addict and if we are to believe early reports he did not actually have intercourse with most or all of these women.
  2. He is a narcissist. Narcissists have overinflated feelings of self-importance and entitlement, lack an ability to be empathic, and often feel the normal rules of society don’t apply to them, because they are so special and unique. Not surprisingly, they are some of the worst people to be in relationships with. Wiener is definitely a narcissist and having at least a snippet of this trait is probably a prerequisite for politics. But did his feelings of grandiosity actually motivate his amazingly erratic behavior?
  3. He is a psychopath. Psychopaths are individuals who lack remorse/empathy, are impulsive, have difficulty controlling their behavior, are manipulative, and are antisocial. The term is evocative and usually brings to our mind images of serial killers like Ted Bundy or a cinematic version Hannibal Lecter. But psychopaths can function in society, and this is likely the best description of Weiner. Glancing at the frequently used checklist to diagnose psychopathy, it’s striking how well these traits fit him.
Viewing Weiner as a psychopath doesn’t excuse his behavior, but at least offers a partial explanation for it. The causes of psychopathy are somewhat unknown and curing it is pretty much impossible – you just can’t all of sudden make someone be remorseful. As such, energy should be placed not in trying to fix a psychopath, but learning to properly handle them. This almost always means not getting married to one and definitely not making one the mayor of New York City. Talk about danger.
The post Is Anthony Weiner a Psychopath? appeared first on Acculturated.

Sequester Weakens Military, Fails to Address Real Pentagon Waste | Commentary »

Sequester Weakens Military, Fails to Address Real Pentagon Waste | Commentary »: For most of last year, Democrats and Republicans in Congress agreed that the sequester was a defense calamity that would undermine military readiness and break faith with our troops and veterans. It's hard to watch their prediction come true while the real waste at the Pentagon goes unchecked.

Quotations of the day »

Quotations of the day »:
1. Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East Berlin is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see. Yet those who are loudest in proclaiming their desire to eliminate poverty are loudest in denouncing capitalism. Man’s well-being is not their goal.
2. If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as “social gains”; if businessmen
struggle for higher profits, this is damned as “selfish greed.” If the workers’ standard of living is low, liberals blame it on the businessman; but if the businessmen attempt to improve their economic efficacy, to expand their markets, and to enlarge the financial returns of their enterprises, thus making higher wages and lower prices possible, the same liberals denounce it as “commercialism.”
~Ayn Rand (HT: Dennis Gartman in today’s The Gartman Letter)

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Black Americans Have Allowed Liberal Policies Based On Corrupt Motives To Destroy Their Families »

Black Americans Have Allowed Liberal Policies Based On Corrupt Motives To Destroy Their Families »:

We have reached a point in American society where the consequences of some very bad decisions are coming due. Like Detroit Michigan, the rest of the country is poised to experience the same fate as the misguided policies of liberalism rear their ugly head and reap destruction wherever implemented. Weather it is multiculturalism, wealth redistribution or power hungry politicians making promises they know they cannot keep; liberalism guarantees a utopia where supposed intellectual elites will make the decisions we struggle with every day. This is where the heart of the problem lies because once you remove a person’s responsibility for the choices they make, you effectively destroy their humanity. People cannot learn if they do not reap the consequences of their decisions, and with today’s public schools ensuring children believe in moral relativity as opposed to moral absolutes they are sending these children into positions of great power. This is why we have political elite, who can see the consequences of their liberal policies in a city like Detroit, wash their hands of them because it served their political ends. These political ends are absolute power and control over a permanent voting base of course.
The greatest, relevant example of what liberalism can do, not only to a society but to the entire people that make up the black population in the United States. Since the days of Lyndon B. Johnson and the great society programs that promised the black family freedom from responsibility, they have become more and more impoverished. That is because they have been lied to and told they do not have to try, and because of their ancestors history they are entitled. Surely, slavery was a great travesty against mankind but it was a worldwide phenomenon that saw European whites enslaved in Egypt as late as the 1880′s. The real travesty is not telling today’s blacks the truth about the history of their current slave masters. There has been a deliberate attempt to destroy the black family through welfare spending and government dependency by the Democrat Party in order to secure a permanent voting base and these politicians, in an effort to hide the facts of their racist past; which connects to the KKK and the lynching of blacks, as well as white republicans who fought for real equality, project their sins onto the rest of society acting as if they are the saviors of the black race. You can thank our education system, as well as the history books simply tell a story of Lyndon Johnsons great society as being a successful program while he was responsible for passing civil rights legislation. Never mind that as Senate Majority leader he ensured the same civil rights legislation put forth by republican president Dwight Eisenhower didn’t pass, only so he could usurp it upon assuming the presidency. To quote Lyndon Johnson “I’ll have those ni**ers voting democratic for the next two hundred years.”
Today we see young black men whose unemployment rates are the highest in the nation, whose inner city communities have been ravished by democrat politicians promising a free ride not knowing any other direction to turn but to lash out violently against those they have been taught to hate. They have been turned into monsters as across the country they muster into a mob mentality and attack innocent people because they believe they have been oppressed. The truth is, they are being oppressed. They are being oppressed by those that stand something to gain by a divided America. They are being oppressed by those that depend on their guaranteed vote so they can stay in power and keep the business of welfare funding going. Now these politicians turn their blind eyes as inner city blacks are killing each other off in the ghettos that liberal Democrats have created for them. I suppose it makes sense when you look at the liberals support for abortion and Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger and she was actually pretty intent on getting rid of the Negro population.
Sadly, it seems that today’s younger blacks, through indoctrination as opposed to education, have been conned into supporting their own downfall through failed liberal policies. Affirmative action is another example. Liberal democrats intent on keeping a secure voting base have convinced black people that they are not as capable as whites and therefore are entitled to lower standards when it comes to college admissions and employment. The lower standard mentality is now even being applied in our high schools. Apparently, this is angering some black people, as it should, but when will they realize that their president supports this? Believing that one group of people is not as capable as another is an example of real blatant racism, yet because there is a free handout involved in it accepted. This is why the black population is where it is today, because they have allowed corrupted liberal policies based on corrupted motives to destroy their families and take away their choice.
That is the real racism and oppression against black America today, the destruction of their ability to choose. I can’t imagine that these black gangs that are running around attacking innocent people would really have made these choices without the race baiting and agitating coming from those who have something to gain. I can’t imagine that a young gang member, who risks life and death every day in the hood would not have made a different choice if he was just told the truth. Instead of telling him that he is oppressed and the white man keeps him down, why not teach him that America is the land of opportunity. It’s funny, and I know I have said this before but the significance of it I believe is paramount for the times. The Schools of Social Work I attended, Northeastern State University where I received my bachelor’s degree, and The University of Oklahoma where I am currently engaged in intellectual combat to get the degree they are withholding from me both taught that America is an oppressive nation that uses power and influence to keep the poor and disadvantaged oppressed. They taught that the capitalist system was the oppressor and the reason why people are impoverished. I fought this notion with every fiber of my being, but one day it dawned on me. They are right, America has become and has been an oppressive nation, it’s just that it is the liberal institutions and the liberal politicians that have agendas and need voters to carry out these agendas that are the oppressors and they accuse their opposition of doing such in order to deceive their targeted populations.
America, it’s time we face this head on and make the efforts to educate black Americans before it is too late.
The post Black Americans Have Allowed Liberal Policies Based On Corrupt Motives To Destroy Their Families appeared first on Freedom Outpost.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

The End of Shame »

The End of Shame »: Weiner's political career will never end, if only because of how much value he has to offer to the media, standup comedians and bored browsers looking for some news item to wake them up long enough to finish another hour of data entry at their job.

Shame has become a mostly discredited concept. The return of Weiner and Spitzer to public life proves as much. But the Era of Shame ended conclusively with Clinton's impeachment proceedings. The only outcome of those proceedings was to degrade the country while leaving the man at the center of the mess intact.

The New York Times ran a preachy editorial telling “the serially evasive Mr. Weiner" to "take his marital troubles and personal compulsions out of the public eye". The censure might have more credibility if the New York Times' editorial board hadn't defended the serially evasive Bill Clinton and urged him to stay instead of telling him to take him "marital troubles and personal compulsions" back to Arkansas.

Is the New York Times really any less serially evasive than Weiner? And for that matter, the Gray Lady's David Carr makes Weiner look like a saint. At least Weiner probably didn't get around to domestic abuse, crack or baby stealing.

The difference between Clinton and Weiner being made by the serially evasive New York Times is one of political convenience.

Pushing Weiner out of the race now will help the Democrats secure Gracie Mansion by preventing a candidate with problems from heading up their party's ticket. If Weiner had already won the runoff, then the message would have been that we have to give him another chance. And another one.

In the White House, Bill Clinton had to be defended to the death. If Weiner makes it inside City Hall, he will have the protection of the media mafia which only cares about making sure the players of the left can shoot and score some policy victories for their side.

If John Edwards had become the President of the United States, he would have been defended to the death and any witnesses and accusers against him would have received the Linda Tripp treatment, instead of the slick lawyer being mocked and kicked to the curb once it became clear that his disgrace might damage the progress of the progressive agenda.

“Enough of all the lies and salacious revelations, Weiner is not fit to lead America’s premier city,” the New York Daily News declared. He isn't, of course, but who is?

Weiner's Democratic rivals include Quinn, the lesbian Council Speaker, who doesn't have a single thought in her head that Bloomberg didn't put there, John Liu, who may go to prison for campaign finance fraud, Bill de Blasio, the Che-quoting radical whose black wife claimed to be a lesbian. At this rate New York City may get its second black mayor, Bill Thompson, because he's the only normal one in the race. Too bad he's an empty suit in search of a body to fill it.

New York City has never been the sort of place to be led by worthy men. Mayor Fernando Wood was a gang member who used Tammany Hall to climb into the mayor's office. He was eventually dragged out of there by the National Guard, but not before a police civil war ensued. Mayor Jimmy Walker left his wife to marry a showgirl and fled to Europe to avoid being prosecuted for corruption.

Despite all that, Fernando Wood gave the city Central Park and Jimmy Walker gave it some catchy tunes and a memorable sense of style.

The difference was that Wood and Walker were never within laughing distance of the White House. New York City voters might make it through another election, fighting the gangs in control of the polling places to cast their vote for Walker, after he got done dumping his wife for a showgirl, or Fernando Wood, after he set off a civil war between police forces over the lucrative trash commissioner appointment, but national voters never would. New York was an outlier.

Weiner though isn't an outlier. He's just another egotistical politician with poor impulse control and a political spouse. That makes him no different than Bill Clinton who presided over his wedding vows. The only extraordinary thing about him is the clumsy ways in which he takes self-destructiveness to a sheepish low. But even there he was nearly topped by John Edwards.

The Clinton era established that a president can do what he likes in the White House and our duty is to avoid paying attention to it because it's his private life. At least once we've giggled enough about it and once enough news professionals have spent hours describing each of their sexual escapades to viewers in detail. And then the backlash against poking into his private life will kick in.

That's not a moral standard. It's tabloid morality that knows no sense of right or wrong, only the utility of shock value. And why should it be otherwise?

The family is a broken mess nationwide. Why should it remain intact among the politicians who championed its destruction? A bachelor president would be unthinkable today, and yet the country was a more moral place in 1850 than it is today. And that may be why we need our leaders to act as symbols of normalcy so that we can be fooled into thinking that nothing is wrong.

The New Yorker who voted for Jimmy Walker was almost certainly part of a family unit. The New Yorker who votes for Weiner or Quinn or de Blasio or any other member of the circus, will have more than a little in common with them. New Yorkers may have voted for Jimmy Walker, but they didn't live like him. Today they do live like Weiner, Quinn and the rest of the gang. And yet they expect higher standards from them.

Shame depends on peer pressure. And peer pressure requires standards. When the standards only exist on television, then shame is an illusion, a mask that politicians can take off and put on again. And it's not as if we believe in shame anymore. Not when the media and a legion of gullible idiots celebrated the defeat of the Defense of Marriage Act. And if DOMA's death sparked some fireworks, why should we expect marriage to be sacred?

The social policies of the past few generations calculatedly severed the bonds between parents and children and husbands and wives. Now we have moved on to mainstreaming homosexuality and redefining gender as a mental fiction. Every day brings new stories about "adorable" transgender kids. And if it's not that, then it's a woman marrying a bridge or outrage over a lesbian being persecuted for molesting a 14-year-old girl. We don't have norms anymore. Why should we have shame and why should we expect shame from the most powerful men and women in the country?

Shame has become random. A tabloid game that we play. It's not based on a set of reciprocal values. There's no right or wrong.

Few politicians personify shame as obligatory ritual the way that Elliot Spitzer does, sighing as he dutifully explains that he let everyone down and he's deeply ashamed and now would everyone please give him enough power to grind Wall Street and everyone else he has a grudge against into dust. Pretty please?

Spitzer crowds every show on television to explain how he let everyone down and how he's going to fix that by cracking down on Wall Street. Only a fool would think that Spitzer had reformed and despite his high poll numbers, New Yorkers aren't fools. But they don't like being made fools of. They know that he hasn't changed, but they don't want their noses rubbed in it because it leaves them with the unpleasant choice of admitting that they voted for an amoral man or claiming that they were fooled.

Weiner's comeback fooled no one. But no one wants to look like they were fooled either. That is why he's falling in the polls. And that is also the story of our society which, known to everyone is tumbling into a moral abyss, but which no one wants to admit to knowing because it implies complicity.

It was easier in 1926. No one pretended to think that Mayor Jimmy Walker was a good man. Not even Walker. It was his cheerful amorality that they were attracted to. His contempt for the office he held, for any mores and values, even those of the most elementary competence and professionalism. New Yorkers liked a good joke, especially in those grim days, and Mayor Walker was an excellent joke, a high class bum posing as a politician, making mock of the very profession by occupying it.

Since then society has become more hypocritical even as it has grown more amoral. We want our bums to play the part of decent men. We seriously expect men who dedicate their entire lives to climbing into office so they can hurl down gifts on their supporters not to be as corrupt in their personal lives as they are in their political lives. Unlike Walker's New Yorkers, we pretend to disdain the very thing that we are entertained by.

Anthony Weiner is the perfect embodiment of the modern liberal beta male, who assures his better half of her moral superiority with his sheepish apologies for a pattern of behavior that everyone knows he will repeat. Jimmy Walker lived a broadly unapologetic life of corruption, while Weiner wears his hangdog expression to endless press conferences apologizing for his corruption. And that too is the perverse legacy of liberalism in making even sin into another joyless political ritual.

In a society without moral values, shame is theater. There is no content to it, only a ritual that the shamed must pass through for the entertainment of the masses. The society that the values revolution  made has has no room for moral judgement and yet it needs its entertainments, its circuses and serial humiliations.

These spectacles have no moral meaning. One day Paula Deen is being tarred and feather and another day it's Anthony Weiner and still another day it's a movie star's mental breakdown and then another random person whose exploits are notable and memeworthy enough to keep the data entry operators from clicking over to a Facebook game. There are no more morals, only circuses. There is no more shame, only boredom
Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger and a Shillman Journalism Fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Is This The Recovery Obama Is Talking About? »

Is This The Recovery Obama Is Talking About? »:
Obama: "...the economy is far stronger now than it was four and a half years ago."
...as long as one ignores the reality of the following chart...



We've seen macro "Hope"and micro "Reality", but for the man in the street, it would appear from the chart above that the trajectory for 'recovery' green shoots is decidedly down and getting worse... even as the President tells the American public they are so much better off...

(h/t @Not_Jim_Cramer)

Take Our "Elites." Please. | VDARE.com

Take Our "Elites." Please. | VDARE.com: "In her recent VDARE.com blog about the appalling married pair Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin, Brenda Walker wrote:

The odd couple of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin is extreme even in a political culture that is becoming more clownish by the day."

'via Blog this'

Obamacare’s Key Flaw »

Obamacare’s Key Flaw »:
obamacare
In Stephen Davidson, Obamacare has found a convinced, but not necessary convincing, defender. Over on the American Interest main site, VM staff writer on health care Peter Blair offers a detailed look at Davidson’s new book on the Affordable Care Act entitled A New Era in US Health Care.
The book is a helpful guide to Obamacare’s provisions, but in discussing the rationales behind them, Davidson reveals a central assumption behind the bill: that the health care crisis needs to be fixed by doctors and insurers rather than consumers. Rather than changing the aspects of the system that keep consumers ignorant of prices, the ACA primarily tries to lower costs by altering the behavior of other actors in the system:
In the end, some of this debate might come down to a perennial tension in American politics: whether to trust the people or the technocrats. Those who trust the technocrats more, like Davidson, want us to tinker with incentives on the provider side, helping doctors provide more care more efficiently. For them, the ACA represents a good attempt to reform insurer and provider incentives. The populists trust the people to exert consumer pressure on providers, if only the system allowed them to.  Since the ACA further entrenches the existing insurance regime, they oppose it.
Throughout the review Blair teases out some weaknesses in an exclusively technocratic approach, and offers some ways in which consumers might contribute to lowering costs and improving quality. Read the whole thing to get a sense of how the day-to-day debates over Obamacare trace to bigger picture questions confronting health care reform.

Dennis Prager | A racial fire created and stoked by the Left - Conservatives4Palin

Dennis Prager | A racial fire created and stoked by the Left - Conservatives4Palin:

'via Blog this'

File under, "True but irrelevant" »

File under, "True but irrelevant" »: Cornell ecologist's study finds that producing ethanol and biodiesel from corn and other crops is not worth the energy | Cornell Chronicle

But the whole point is not producing energy. It is political patronage and palm crossing.