PK'S NOTE: I'll start with the uplifting before getting to the others. And something to keep in mind: Bill Ayers and others of the Weathermen committed crimes like the Boston bombing and are now teaching in universities. Think about that.
A picture is worth 1,000 words: Unity in the wake of tragedy
A message from New York to Boston projected on Brooklyn Academy of Music:
Read Actor’s Inspirational Message on Humanity’s Inherent Goodness Following Marathon Bombings
Many
people are desperately searching for someone to blame for the horrific
Boston Marathon bombings. There have been accusations of so-called
right-wing extremism and Islamic extremism as people struggle to make
sense of such a pointless act of terror.
Instead
of placing blame on a group or individual (especially since we don’t
know who is responsible), actor Patton Oswalt sought to remind those who
do evil that they are “outnumbered” and always will be.
In a Facebook post
that had more than 180,000 likes as of 9:23 p.m. ET Monday, Oswalt
penned an inspirational message in the wake of the terrible attacks:
Boston. F**king horrible.
I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, “Well, I’ve had it with humanity.”
But
I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all
of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken
sociopaths.
But
here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that
number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent
of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage
and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out.
(Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this
out to me). This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but
there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of
existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny
sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.
But
the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood
cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away
the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is
beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity
were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.
So
when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just
garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye
and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/15/read-actors-inspirational-message-on-humanitys-inherent-goodness-following-marathon-bombings-the-good-outnumber-you-and-we-always-will/
Standing with Boston
America is at its best when it faces adversity with courage, confidence, and determination. That recipe of “what makes us who we are” holds for hurricanes, disasters, and tragedies like the one that occurred during yesterday’s Boston Marathon.
A security professional knows what to do first: Take care of the injured, protect the responders and bystanders who are racing to the scene to help (who can often be the target of follow-on attacks), and preserve the evidence available at the scene. Those efforts appear well underway. We should be proud of the responders and the citizens of Boston.
Our assessments and speculation on what to do next should not outpace what we know. Even very authoritative-sounding reports issued from the scene or shared by on-scene reporters or witnesses may turn out to be inaccurate. That has already proven the case in Boston with conflicting reports on the number of explosions, claims of suspects in custody, and statements about unexploded devices being recovered.
In cases such as this, officials often can garner a tremendous amount of evidence from the crime scene in the first 72 hours. In such investigations, you start with the evidence and that leads to suspects, not the other way around.
Law enforcement in other communities may want to take additional precautions. Pittsburg, for example, has a citywide marathon coming up in a few weeks. That might be prudent. Any additional security after an event like this, however, should be based on professional assessments of risk and any intelligence that is available. America's enemies can't be everywhere.
Protecting large public events is the most difficult of public safety challenges. Further, these gatherings are most vulnerable to exactly the kind of incident that occurred in Boston. That said, the reasonable public safety precautions that can be taken to thwart them are well known. After the fact, it will have to be determined if these were properly taken.
Unfortunately, such measures—even if fully implemented—cannot perfectly safeguard such large crowds. The best security, if this is confirmed as a coordinated, predetermined act, is to stop the perpetrators before they undertake their attacks.
Bringing perpetrators to justice, preventing further attacks, and learning lessons from this incident on how to prevent or respond to future incidents will come in time. For now, we should all stand with Boston. We should all show the world that today will we get up unafraid, and America will step forward into the day.
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/04/16/morning-bell-standing-with-boston/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Barney Frank Politicizes Boston Bombing: ‘No Tax Cut Would Have Helped Us Deal with This’
Former
Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) decided to make an odd segue from
discussing the tragic bombing in Boston on CNN this morning into a
discussion of fiscal policy that more or less reduced the bombing itself
to a political prop.
The
segment began when the CNN anchor asked Frank, “We are talking about
recovery here all morning, as this city, as this state tries to bounce
back from this, and someone brought up an interesting point that, in
some ways, the recovery is based on the response. The response yesterday
was so remarkable. They stopped the marathon mid-point and calmly moved
some 5,000 people from the racecourse. There were moments of chaos
right there, but they were able to clear the scene fairly well. What are
your impressions of the response in Boston so far?”
Frank responded (emphasis added):
“I’m
glad you raised that, because it gives me a chance to make a point I’ve
felt strongly about. In this terrible situation, let’s be very grateful
that we had a well-funded, functioning government. It is very
fashionable in America, and has been for some time to criticize
government, belittle public employees, talk about their pensions, talk
about what people think of their expensive health care. Here we saw
government in two ways perform very well. First of all, the city
government in charge performed efficiently and rapidly and bravely.
Secondly…as you’ve shown on the program, you don’t know when it’s state
and when it’s federal and when it’s the city. The police commissioner on
the screen would be ahead of the FBI, and then the governor. And that
also goes for the recovery. Again, I never was as a member of
Congress one of the cheerleaders for less government, lower taxes. No
tax cut would have helped us deal with this or will help us recover.
This is very expensive. You have adequately described thousands and thousands of people examining every parcel…providing medical care. What
I’m asking people is, whether you have private health insurance or not,
whether you can afford this or not, maybe the government’s going to
have to pay for it. This is an example of why we need, if we’re going to be a civilized society, to put some of our resources into a common pool.”
Frank went on, “On the whole, I would say this is a terrible day for our
society, but a day when I hope people will understand the centrality of
having a government in place.” He also criticized people who might try
to argue for “saving pennies” in the future, implying strongly that such
people would favor no public response to disasters like this.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/16/barney-frank-politicizes-boston-bombing-no-tax-cut-would-have-helped-us-deal-with-this/
Homeland Security Website: 'Learn How DHS Helps Keep Our Nation Safe'
(Update: Sometime after 10:15 a.m. on Tuesday, DHS changed its website to feature a reminder: "If You See Something, Say Something." The feature explaining "how DHS helps keep our nation safe," described below, was bumped to number two in the story rotation on the DHS home page.)
(CNSNews.com) - The Department of Homeland Security, as of 10:15 a.m. EDT Tuesday, was featuring on its home page a message explaining "how DHS helps keep our nation safe."
Clicking on the featured story -- "A Day in the Life of DHS" -- takes visitors to a page showing what DHS is doing by "air, sea, land, or in cyberspace" to protect Americans.
"Every day, DHS employees all over the country work to protect the American public from a range of threats, including terrorism, natural disasters, cyber attacks and other emergencies and disasters. Whether by air, sea, land or in cyberspace, DHS vigilance over the last ten years helps keep our nation safe."
The feature includes a chart showing how the DHS keeps busy with screenings, seizures, confiscations, inspections, patrols, citizenship verifications and other activities.
On the DHS home page, right below the featured “Day in the Life of DHS," is a statement on the Boston explosions from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
She writes: “Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone impacted by this incident in Boston, especially the families and loved ones of the victims. Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies continue to respond and at the President’s direction, the Department of Homeland Security is providing any support necessary in this ongoing investigation. We encourage the public to be vigilant, and to listen to direction from state and local officials.”
Aside from that written statement, Napolitano, as of Tuesday morning, had not said anything publicly about the Boston terror attacks.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/homeland-security-website-learn-how-dhs-helps-keep-our-nation-safe
PK'S NOTE: But this administration did send an official U.S. delegation to Caracas for the funeral of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Read More At Investor's Business Daily: What Is The U.S. Doing At Chavez's Funeral?
No White House envoy to Thatcher funeral? Update: Boehner sending House delegation
And the British government is apparently unhappy about it, too. Sources within Whitehall told the Daily Mail that the Obama administration’s decision to skip sending an envoy to what has become a de facto state funeral for one of America’s staunchest Cold War allies came before the Boston terrorist attack yesterday, and that the White House had cited a “busy week” for the reason they couldn’t even spare Joe Biden for Margaret Thatcher’s funeral:Friends and allies of Baroness Thatcher expressed ‘surprise and disappointment’ last night as it emerged President Obama is not planning to send any serving member of his administration to her funeral.
Whitehall sources have revealed that the US delegation at tomorrow’s service in St Paul’s Cathedral will be led by two Reagan era secretaries of state: James Baker and George Shultz.
Though President Obama himself had not been expected to attend, there had been speculation that he would be represented either by Vice President Joe Biden or wife Michelle. However, the Obama administration had said it would not be attending Thatcher’s funeral before the Boston bombings.
The Queen’s decision to attend Lady Thatcher’s funeral has effectively elevated it to a state occasion unprecedented for a political figure in Britain since the death of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965.
Other world leaders, including Canada’s Stephen Harper, Mario Monti of Italy and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, are attending the service in person.Normally, that would prompt attendance by a high-level figure in the US government — if not the President or Vice-President, a high-ranking Cabinet official. For instance, why not send John Kerry, the Secretary of State tasked with maintaining good relations with close allies like the UK? Instead, the US delegation will consist of two men who would be traveling as private citizens to the funeral already, essentially giving an official policy of ignoring the event and snubbing the other world leaders attending it.
And why? Obama and Biden are too busy pushing gun control, according to the US embassy:
But a US embassy spokesman confirmed that no serving member of his administration would be present to pay their last respects, citing a busy week in US domestic politics.
‘This is a hugely significant week in terms of US domestic politics,’ a spokesman added.
He said that both the First Lady and the Vice President were ‘the President’s point people on gun control’, adding: ‘This is a week when there is a lot of movement on Capitol Hill on gun control issues.’Well, Kerry isn’t part of that, is he? (Oh, wait ….) They’re too busy to pay respects to someone who stood by America as a stalwart partner in the latter years of the Cold War, when it might have been easier for her to keep her distance. Shameful. And it’s not being ignored in the UK, either:
Former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox, Lady Thatcher’s closest ally in modern-day politics, said: ‘I think it would be both surprising and disappointing if after President Obama’s fulsome tribute to Lady Thatcher, the American administration did not send a senior serving member to represent them.’
Sir Gerald Howarth, chairman of the Thatcherite Conservative Way Forward group of MPs and peers, said: ‘The bonds forged between the UK and the US through Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in ending the Cold War and liberating millions of people.
‘That the present administration feels unable to be represented as the world marks the extraordinary contribution Margaret Thatcher made will be a source of disappointment to those who served with her in that great endeavour.’Smart power.
Update: Just as a reminder, Congress decides separately on delegations to events such as this. I’d expect to see both the House and Senate send small delegations to the funeral.
Update: Just received by e-mail, but it actually came out yesterday:
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) today announced he will send a delegation to London this week to represent the U.S. House of Representatives at the funeral of Baroness Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of the United Kingdom. The delegation will be led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
“Margaret Thatcher was one of the greatest champions freedom has ever known, and her funeral gives Americans and friends around the world an opportunity to pay final respects,” Boehner said. “I’m pleased that Congressman Blackburn will lead a House delegation to Baroness Thatcher’s funeral to communicate our prayers and condolences to her family and the British people.”
The House delegation to London will also include Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and George Holding (R-NC).
The House delegation will fly to London on commercial air flights, in compliance with the Speaker’s directive that Member use of military air transportation be suspended with sequestration in effect.Also, our ambassador in London should attend the funeral, but that’s not the same as sending a delegation representing the head of state.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/04/16/no-white-house-envoy-to-thatcher-funeral/
PK'S NOTE: Political agenda? Noooo!
Gallup: Only 4% of Americans Think Gun Control is an Important Problem
Only 4 percent of Americans think guns and gun control are an
important problem facing the country, according to Gallup, and far more
Americans are concerned about the economy, unemployment and the
federal debt.
Respondents answered in the following order:
Economy in general 24%
Unemployment/Jobs 18%
Dissatisfaction with Government 16%
Federal budget deficit/Federal debt 11%
Healthcare 6%
Ethical/Moral/Family decline 5%
Immigration/Illegal aliens 4%
Education 4%
Guns/Gun control 4%
Situation with North Korea 4%
Lack of Money 3%
Welfare 2%
Lack of respect for each other 2%
Poverty/Hunger/Homelessness 2%
Foreign aid/Focus overseas 2%
Taxes 2%
Despite the Obama administration’s strong push for more gun control legislation, few Americans are concerned about the issue.
As Gallup reports, “Few Americans mention guns or immigration as the most important problems facing the nation today, despite the current attention lawmakers in Washington are giving to these issues. The economy still dominates as the top concern, followed by jobs and dissatisfaction with the general way in which Congress and the government work.”
These data “underscore the prominence of economic issues in Americans’ minds,” said Gallup.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/gallup-only-4-americans-think-gun-control-important-problem
PK'S NOTE: This explains things so simply. Please read.
Minority View: Price Versus Cost
Suppose you buy a gallon of gas for $3. How much did it cost you? You say, “Williams, that’s a silly question. It cost $3.” That’s where you’re mistaken, because there’s a difference between price and cost. To prove that price and cost are not the same, consider the following. Suppose you live and work in New York City and routinely pay $15 for a haircut. Imagine you were told that there’s a barber in Boise, Idaho, who can give you the identical haircut for just $5. Would you start going to the Boise barber? I’m betting you’d answer no because even though the price is cheaper, the cost is greater.We might think of price as the money that’s actually given in exchange for the transfer of ownership. When you purchased the gallon of gas, you simply transferred your ownership of $3. What the gas cost you is a different matter. One way to determine the cost of a gallon of gas is to ask yourself what sacrifice you had to make in order to have $3 to buy it. Say that your annual salary is $75,000. Your total federal income tax, state income tax, local taxes and Social Security and Medicare taxes come to about 35 percent of your salary. That means that in order to purchase the $3 gallon of gas required that you earned about $4.60 in order to have $3 after taxes. That means a gallon of gas costs you $4.60 worth of sacrifice. But that’s not so costly as it is to a richer person — for example, someone earning a yearly salary of $500,000. He has to earn more than $5 before taxes in order to have $3 after taxes to purchase gas.
If taxes only concealed hidden costs of what we buy, we’d be lucky, but taxes are destructive in another hidden way. Suppose I want to hire you to repair my computer. Having the work done is worth $200 to me, and performing the work is worth $200 to you. The transaction occurs because we have a meeting of the minds. Suppose Congress imposes a 30 percent income tax on you. That means that if you repaired my computer, you would receive not $200, what it was worth to you to do the job, but instead $140 after taxes. You might say the heck with repairing my computer; spending time with your family is worth more than $140.
You might then offer that you’d do the job if I paid you $283. That way, your after-tax earnings would be $200 — what doing the job is worth to you. There’s a problem. The repair job was worth $200 to me, not $283. So it’s my turn to say the heck with it.
This simple example demonstrates that one effect of taxes is that of destroying transactions and hence jobs. But politicians have what economists call a zero-elasticity vision of the world. In other words, they’re fool enough to believe that people will behave after taxes are levied just as they behaved before and that the only effect of a tax is to bring in more revenue. Of course, a more flattering assessment is that politicians are not fools and know that their actions destroy transactions and hence jobs but they don’t give a damn and only care about revenue.
Here’s a question: Would you and I, as well as our nation, be better off if you repaired my computer and I gave you $200 in cash and we agreed not to report the transaction to the agents of Congress? I’d answer yes and no. Yes, because there’d be more transactions, more jobs and greater wealth. No, because we’d be criminals.
Taxes are necessary to fund the constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government. If Congress spent according to its authority under Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution, taxes wouldn’t be any more than 5 percent of the gross domestic product, as it was between 1787 and 1920, as opposed to today’s 20 percent.
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/04/16/price-versus-cost/
President Obama's Plan for A Socialist One Party State
The last check and balance on President Obama is the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. He has made clear that he intends to remove that check on his power in the 2014 elections.Our Founding Fathers wisely provided for a free and independent press as an additional check on government power. But the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, CBS and ABC decided they had a better idea. They concluded that it is more important to behave voluntarily like the old Soviet press did under government compulsion, when the socialist party is in power.
Of course, we do still have the freedom in America for now for the alternative media -- talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, conservative websites, blogs and a few other media outlets - to air criticism of the reigning socialist regime. But 50% of the country is ensconced in urban enclaves where listening to or reading views that are not friendly to socialist rule is considered socially unacceptable behavior. So, no alternative views, or checks on the reigning regime, ever break through there. That explains why our once grand, world-leading democracy has now been rendered dysfunctional.
An independent judiciary is also supposed to be a check and balance on the abuse of government power. But as his second term drags on, President Obama will have appointed more and more, and eventually a majority of, all federal judges.
Moreover, these won't just be any judges but liberal judges chosen with a liberal judicial philosophy that their job is not to follow the law, but to do what they think is right, regardless of the law. What is "right" is going to be Obama's liberal/left agenda.
Holding the line even right now are only five rapidly aging old men on the Supreme Court. Replacing even one of them with a liberal appointee will mean the end of the Reagan majority on the Court. Everything in our society will then change. Gun rights and the Second Amendment, gone in a heartbeat. Property rights and the rule of law, forget about it. Religious freedom? Only for the socialist religion.
These will be replaced by a constitutional right to welfare, and to your money. By gay marriage. And by a right to free contraceptives for everyone, so America can party on right through its decline, just like in Europe.
The Second Mid-Term Hex HeHexz
The second mid-term election of a two term incumbent President, as in 2014, has historically been a disaster for the party of the incumbent President. It was so even for Franklin Roosevelt in 1938. It was so for the war hero Dwight Eisenhower in 1958. Counting Kennedy/Johnson as one Administration, it was true for them as well in 1966. And it was so even for Ronald Reagan, even in the midst of an historic recovery, when the Republicans lost control of the Senate, and even more ground in the Democrat majority House, in 1986.
As University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato and Kyle Kondik write in the March 19 Wall Street Journal,
"Since the start of the modern two-party system in the mid-19th century, the party of an incumbent president has never captured control of the House from the other party in a mid-term election. While many presidents have held the House for their party, in 35 of 38 midterms since the Civil War the incumbent's party has lost ground."
And that is in any mid-term, not just in the more onerous second mid-terms.
But President Obama has decided to defy that history. He has decided not to try to govern with the Republican House majority, but to devote the next 18 months to political posturing and framing the issues so negatively against the Republicans that America would rally to give Obama total control of the government in November 2014, with a restored Democrat majority in the House as well, leaving no check on Obama's power at all.
That is because President Obama's goal is the radical transformation of America from the world's leading capitalist state, the freest, most prosperous, and mightiest in history, into just another socialist third world country. But he knows he can't do that with the Republican House majority elected in 2010 precisely to stop his socialist agenda. For that radical, socialist transformation, reflecting what the Democratic Party and their party controlled media lapdogs are really all about, he needs total control of Congress. For that he needs, effectively, a socialist, one-party state, which is actually what he is after in defying history, and seeking a restored Democrat House majority.
Organizing for Action
This is what Obama's new 501(c)(4) organization, Organizing for Action, is all about. He has transformed his campaign into that organization, giving it the advanced social media technology, contact lists, and grassroots infrastructure of the campaign. Jason Stverak, President of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, writes in the March 15 Washington Times, "Organizing for Action is flooding the airwaves with advertisements praising the Obama Administration's policies, and viewers at home are being inundated with just as many talking points and political attacks as they were during the 2012 campaign."
Through that organization, Obama has begun an unprecedented fundraising crusade to raise $50 million to be spent in Republican districts to discredit Congressional Republican incumbents. But as a 501(c)(4) social activist organization, Organizing for Action is not subject to campaign financing limits. For half a million in contributions, donors get private meetings with Obama where they can lobby for their personal agendas, crony capitalist favoritism, and other special interest pleading.
This is going to be the ugliest smear campaign in American political history, similar to what we saw in 2012, where the President's campaign made up Romney's positions and then campaigned against their own strawmen. Such as the charges that Romney was proposing middle class tax increases, or that he wanted to ban contraceptives. When the real Romney showed up during the first debate to say that those were not his positions, Obama partisans responded that he must be lying.
It is up to conservative activists to respond to this with truth squads to counter and reveal the propaganda. This is not going to be primarily about Republicans, but about preserving the credibility of the conservative philosophy, which is actually what is going to be under attack. Witness the current liberal/left Democrat campaign for gun control and gay marriage. We need to preserve, protect and defend the Reagan economic record, for example. We need to explain the root government causes of the financial crisis, and advocate reforms so it will never happen again. In addition to tax reform, spending control, and entitlement reforms, that would involve monetary reform, so America can once again enjoy a dollar as good as gold.
We also need to promote and defend the national defense doctrine of peace through strength. And we need to more than redouble a positive vision of religious freedom and pro-family values.
The High Stakes Gamble
In defying the long term political trends, President Obama is engaged in a high stakes political gamble, putting his own political credibility on the line. If Obama breaks the historical pattern, and the Democrats take the House, then Obama will be the new Hugo Chavez, in effective authoritarian control of America.
But if the historical patterns hold, and instead of the Democrats taking back the House, the Republicans take back the Senate, then President Obama will be a politically discredited lame duck, facing an entirely Republican controlled Congress. His socialist transformation of America will be over and exposed.
Prospects are actually quite good for the Republicans to take over Senate control. Besides the historical trends, Sabato and Kondik further explain,
"Democrats are defending seats in seven states that Mitt Romney won in last year's Presidential race: Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Mr. Obama won an average of just 40.5% of the vote in these states. In addition, the retirements of longtime Sens. Tom Harkin (D. Iowa) and Carl Levin (D., Mich.) make those previously safe seats much more competitive. Factor in some freshman Democratic Senators elected from swing states in Obama's 2008 wave (the last time this batch of seats was contested), and Republicans could run competitive challenges in 10 or more Democrat-held seats. Incompetent GOP nominees could change the picture, but almost all of the seats that Republicans are defending are in solid-red states."
The Bible says, "By their fruits ye shall know them." Adding to GOP prospects for next year are Obama chickens coming home to roost. Obamacare will be creating chaos in health care next year, with tens of millions losing their employer provided health insurance. Health insurance premiums will be soaring, to double or more for many, particularly young adults. The negative market reaction to those increases will be causing health insurers to collapse and go out of business, resulting in still more government takeover of health care.
Millions will lose their jobs as employers seek to downsize and break up to avoid the economically fatal costs of Obamacare. Millions of others will be reduced to part time workers for the same reason. That will mean further declining real wages and incomes for working people and the middle class, with poverty soaring still higher.
If the Obama economy falls back into recession in the second term, as Obama deserves, it will be the Democratic Party that will be on the verge of extinction. Unemployment would explode into double digits, and deficits would soar to over $2 trillion.
And then there will be a new front regarding chaos in foreign policy. Iran is likely to break out as a nuclear power before the mid-terms, which may mean nuclear war in the Middle East. At best, it would mean nuclear proliferation efforts spreading to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and other Middle Eastern nations. North Korea's nuclear breakout would extend that to Japan, South Korea, and maybe Australia (especially as the American nuclear umbrella fades under Obama policies). The formerly progressive citadels of San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle will have new reasons to begin to question Obama's foolish national defense policies.
In my opinion, Obama is primarily motivated by ideology and power, and not by the trappings of office. I predict that if we aggressively advance the conservative philosophy over the next two years, do our job in the midterms (electing not just Republicans, but true Tea Party Republicans), and make the historical patterns stick, Obama won't want to be a time server for the last two years, battling Republicans with no ability to advance his socialist agenda.
I predict in that case, Obama will resign, ending the Marxist assault on America as a failure. He will let Biden run for reelection as an incumbent, with Hillary on the ticket. Then it will be time for the rest of us to clean house, everywhere Marxists have already infiltrated American society and culture, from the Democrat Party controlled media, to Hollywood, to "academic" cloisters of taxpayer financed Marxism.
If this generation of Americans cannot rise to defend traditional American freedom and prosperity, we will lose both. And deserve to.
Spying on the Progressives
Republicans have been so busy attacking each other lately that little attention is being paid to the antics of the left. The far left activists, including the Occupy movement and Anonymous, have been quite busy.The Occupiers are helping fast food workers strike for higher wages and a union. Their targets include Wendy's and Burger King in New York City. If they really wanted to help those workers, they would encourage them to attend college and find higher paying jobs. The founder of the Occupy movement, Adbusters, is organizing Occupiers to protest Goldman Sachs banks around the world. They would be better off targeting the politicians who created the arbitrary laws that banks must operate inside of; running one bank out of business won't change the status quo.
Anonymous, the shadowy, unorganized group of hackers and anarchists, has been threatening vigilante justice in sexual assault cases. One of the main problems with this tactic was seen in the case of Amanda Todd. The teenager committed suicide after relentless cyberbullying. Anonymous outed Kody Maxson as her attacker. It was reported later that he was the wrong man. By then he had received over 50 death threats. This month, Anonymous is demanding that police reopen a closed investigation into four young men who allegedly raped 17-year old Rehtaeh Parsons and bullied her for two years. She committed suicide in early April. Anonymous threatened to release the minors' names if the case wasn't reopened, and coincidentally the police have now reopened the case. Parsons' mother is concerned and says her daughter would not have wanted more harm to come to anyone.
In response to the rash of high-profile school shootings, the left is proposing gun control and mental health legislation. The left was responsible for taking dangerous mentally ill people out of the hospitals and releasing them into our communities beginning in the 1950s. Now we're all paying the price for it. Instead of reversing this, though, the left is proposing touchy-feely measures. The Trinity University Progressives are organizing a Mental Health Awareness Week which features a “Stress-Free Zone,” massages and depression screening. Proposed federal legislation just throws more money at mental illness treatment. As usual, liberals would rather put a band-aid on the problem afterwards when it's too late, instead of getting at the root of it. There wouldn't be so much mental illness if there was better parenting, but liberals are so nonjudgmental they don't dare admit that single parenting, children born out of wedlock, parents with addictions, a failure to emphasize moral values, and other family situations can be less healthy for children.
The Democracy Alliance, a George Soros organization funded by wealthy progressives, has been steering money to dark-money groups that reveal very little about their funding sources. Its website is a shell, containing barely any information. Many of its donors contributed $4.8 million to Obama's Organizing For Action this past quarter. Organizing for Action used to be called Organizing for America, but like most of the shadowy funding organizations Obama works with, changed its name and organizational structure in order to avoid scrutiny and to funnel money a different way. Stanley Kurtz's book Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities, thoroughly exposed the shiftiness of these slick organizations Obama has been involved with. Organizing for America is currently focusing on promoting Obama's budget, gun control and immigration reform.
The powerful Democracy Alliance recently underwent a purging of its progressive partners. It eliminated less mainstream groups in favor of organizations with close ties to the Democrat Party. Media Matters and the Center for American Progress were retained, while groups related to minority issues were dropped. Apparently they realize minorities are going to support the left no matter what – evidence Republicans are far behind when it comes to minority voters.
There is almost as much internal feuding within the left as there is on the right. The Occupiers are complaining that Obamacare doesn't go far enough. Their Strike Debt project web page whines about the lack of health insurance and high costs, “Unfortunately, the Affordable Health Care Act (aka Obamacare) will not address most of these problems. It will certainly raise access—to expensive 'under-insurance' plans with high deductibles and lots of out-of-pocket costs. Strike Debt believes that health care that covers all a person’s needs is not a 'Cadillac' plan but a human right.”
Democracy Now, the progressive organization led by Howard Dean's brother Jim, and MoveOn.org, are stirring up anger against Obama over proposed changes to Social Security. President Obama has proposed tying Social Security cost-of-living increases to the Consumer Price Index (“chaining the CPI”), which would mean those receiving Social Security would see slightly lower annual increases in income. Both of the groups organized liberals into delivering two million petitions to the White House in protest last week. Progressives are threatening primary challenges to Democrats in Congress who vote for Obama's budget since it includes this provision.
Democracy Now is launching the Purple to Blue Project to target state legislatures. Noting that Republicans hold 58 percent of all state legislative chambers in the U.S., the left is realizing they've neglected this arena. Progressive.org is still going after Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, with a special section devoted to it on their website.
If Republicans were better organized and as aggressive as the left, they would draw more attention to the activities of the left's shadowy organizations, and its internal feuds. The left is brilliant at focusing attention on divisions within the right, which ties up Republicans from getting much accomplished, and putting them on the defensive. Instead of letting the left decide that the debate is going to be about gay marriage, which the left is winning - especially if they have nothing else to distract them - Republicans should put the focus on the issues the left is divided on. If mass numbers of people on the right, particularly in leadership or media positions, started repeatedly bringing up the left's divided issues during interviews, TV appearances, and in written articles, the left would no longer control the dialogue.
Those of us on the right must start regularly monitoring the left. This means regularly checking in with the Twitter feeds #p2 and #ows for breaking news from the left. Sign up for email updates from their shadowy organizations. And start squawking loudly.
http://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2013/04/16/spying-on-the-progressives-n1569232/page/full/
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