RALEIGH, N.C. – The U.S. Army plans to prevent media from covering Sarah Palin’s appearance at Fort Bragg, fearing the event will turn into political grandstanding against President Barack Obama, officials said Thursday.
… McCollum said the Army did not want the Monday event to become a platform to express political opinions “directed against the commander in chief.”
What I find interesting [sickening] is that our military leaders, the defenders of the free republic, will not allow a patriot, Sarah Palin, to speak out in support of our troops, while their commander in chief is doing everything in his power to not support the troops he is suppose to be commanding.
How is that for an oxymoron?
Even more shocking is that according to Tom McCollum, military officials do not consider Sarah – the patriot – a politician because she is critical of Obama and his policies in regards to our troops who are in dire need of support in Afghanistan.
McCollum said it’s not clear if military officials consider Palin a politician but noted that she has been critical of Obama while promoting the book. She said in an interview with ABC News that Obama should provide more troops to Afghanistan.
“It frustrates me and frightens me — and many Americans — that President Obama is dithering around with the decision in Afghanistan,” she said.
Who exactly are the military protecting; Obama’s elites and their egos, or the brave men and women over in Afghanistan?
Next Issue with Free Speech
Here lies the issue. If our military, congress and the Obama Administration are truly claiming to support the constitution of this nation which includes the freedom of speech for every single citizen, then why would Obama and his defenders of socialism be dead set on silencing those exact freedoms?
Why would a defender like Mark Llyod ( FCC Diversity Czar ) believe in the silencing of the press?
“It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.
“[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance.”
Why would a member of Obama’s team be infatuated with dictators like Hugo Chavez?
“In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution – a democratic revolution. To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela.
Let me remind you, this is the same Venezuela where Journalists fear for their lives, where they are shot and murdered for their freedom of speech.
A series of violent attacks, including the killing of a newspaper executive, fueled concern among journalists. On June 3, Pierre Fould Gerges, vice president of the Caracas daily Reporte Diario de la Economía, was shot to death by unidentified gunmen.
Why would yet another defender of freedom such as Mr. McChesney wish to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles?
Why would Obama put himself in alignment with these men like McChesney who believes that Marxism is the only way for a society?
Why?
Could it be that maybe this new administration and the one prior ( Patriot Act ) actually do not want you to have your freedoms any longer as they finally believe that now is the time for a real revolution to take place by revoking your first amendment rights that were once protected under the constitution that seems to be fading into obscurity?
Was this part of theCHANGE that Obama has been speaking of by transforming America?
Is this the CHANGE that he wishes to enforce upon each and every one of us who live in America?
First they silence the politicians,
then the silence the media,
then they silenced you…
Yup CHANGE we can all believe in…
Sources
“Attacks on the Press in 2008: Venezuela – Committee to Protect Journalists.” Committee to Protect Journalists (February 10, 2009). http://www.cpj.org.
MIKE BAKER. “Army fears anti-Obama politics at Palin event – Yahoo! News.” Associated Press, November 19, 2009. http://news.yahoo.com.
Motley, Seton. “If You Like FCC Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd and Van Jones, You’ll Love Free Press Co-Founder Robert McChesney.” NewsBusters, November 5, 2009. http://newsbusters.org.
Seton Motley. “FCC’s Diversity Czar: ‘White People’ Need to be Forced to ‘Step Down’ ‘So Someone Else Can Have Power’.” NewsBusters, September 23, 2009. http://newsbusters.org.
Seton Motley. “Video: FCC ‘Diversity’ Czar on Chavez’s Venezuela: ‘Incredible…Democratic Revolution’.” NewsBusters, September 28, 2009. http://newsbusters.org.
Simon Romero. “Killings and Threats Rattle Journalists in Venezuela.” The New York Times, November 19, 2006, sec. International / Americas. http://www.nytimes.com.
As I sit and ponder on the events that transpired eight years ago against our nation, it forces me wonder what ever happened to America since then.
I remember very clearly how we as a nation came together to fight against those who wished to destroy our way of life, those who wished for America to no longer exists as we know it, and even through the turmoil they transgressed against us, we stood fast as a people, and came together as a nation, putting our difference aside – showing the world who we are; Americans that helped one another in a time of tragedy, in a time of need.
Obama Speaks
As I listen to the words of Mr. Obama, I am compelled to expose his empty plagiarized words; his words of smoke filled lies, his words of deception. On 9/11 Mr. Obama spoke as if he mourned for those who lost their lives to a new enemy that arose against this nation that day eight years ago, an enemy that he says does not exist , an enemy that he wishes to protect and give immunity to, an enemy that he sides with over the victims that were murdered on that day, September 11th, eight years ago.
Yet, this man, Mr. Obama, will try to make you believe that he grieves as the family of the victims grieves, but just a few short months ago his actions, words and deeds are completely contrary to the words in which he spoke to the American people just two short days ago.
NEW YORK (CNN) — President Obama spoke at the Pentagon on Friday to those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001, telling them no words would heal their pain yet calling for a renewed resolve against the ones who attacked the country eight years ago.
“No words can ease the ache of your hearts,” Obama told a crowd of relatives and friends standing under umbrellas in a steady rain. The plane, American Airlines Flight 77, struck the Pentagon’s west wall.
“Eight Septembers have come and gone,” Obama said. “Nearly 3,000 days have passed, almost one for each one who has been taken from us.
“We recall the beauty and meaning of their lives,” he said. “No passage of time, no dark skies can dull the meaning of that moment.
“Let us renew our resolve against those who perpetrated this violent act,” Obama said. [ 1 ] cnn.com
Renew our Resolve against those who perpetrated this violent act
Really Mr. Obama, do you really mean these words in which we read from the speech you have spoken?
Do you really wish to have resolve against those who attacked us on that day Mr. Obama?
Or is this yet another futile attempt to further blind unaware Americans with the empty words you call, “Just Words”.
Unlike others Mr. Obama, many of us have not forgotten that dayas we watched it unfold eight years ago, nor have we forgotten what America stood for in the past, nor have we forgotten the recent steps you and your administration are taking against our nation; the steps that if not corrected quickly will destroy our constitution and our nation, leaving it a country that no one will be able to recognize any longer.
Mr. Obama, I ask you this one question, what kind of resolve are you referring to?
Are you referring to the resolve that would protect those who attacked our nation on that day of infamy eight years ago?
Detailed intelligence that could link members of the Saudi royal family to groups that financed the 9/11 terror attacks may never see the light of day, in part due to an Obama administration move to have a lawsuit filed on behalf of 7,600 relatives of 9/11 victims thrown out.
The administration’s efforts to squelch the lawsuit may face a complication. An unknown source anonymously gave the families’ attorneys over 50 classified U.S. government documents related to the law suit. The Justice Department subsequently destroyed the lawyers’ copies of those documents.
…Family members asked why the administration was siding with the Saudis and trying to block their case, but the officials dodged those questions, they said. [ 2 ] newsmax.com
Or maybe you might be referring to the resolve that would allow those involved in this heinous act to go unpunished and untouched?
The Obama administration has intervened to quash a civil suit filed against Saudi Arabia by survivors and family members of victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks…
…According to an article by Eric Lichtblau in the June 24 New York Times, documents assembled by lawyers for the 9/11 families “provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family.” However, the article states, the documents may never find their way into court because of legal challenges by Saudi Arabia, which are being supported by the US Justice Department.
…The administration is taking extraordinary measures to kill the suit and suppress the evidence of Saudi support for Al Qaeda and complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Last month, the Justice Department sided in court with the Saudi monarchy in seeking to halt further legal action. Moreover, it had copies of American intelligence documents on Saudi finances that had been leaked to lawyers for the families destroyed, and is now seeking to prevent a judge from even looking at the material. [ 3 ] wsws.org
If not the kind of resolve to prosecute those involved, maybe it is the kind of resolve that would release known terrorist to do what they do best, destroy cultures and societies?
…A series of closed-door meetings between the relatives’ groups and Justice Department officials, arranged as an update on Mr. Obama’s plan to close the detention facility at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba… [ 4 ] washingtontimes.com
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that 61 former detainees were believed to have returned to terrorism since their release from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba…
…people who are being held at Guantánamo who are still bent on doing harm to America – Americans and our allies.
… 18 had been confirmed as once again having become directly involved in “terrorist activities. ” [ 5 ] telegraph.co.uk
Or it could be the kind of resolve where we will finally lay down and submit to those who wish our freedoms and way of life destroyed?
And just to be sure that no one is mistaken in the actions in which he took lets re-visit it in slow motion Obama in slow motion…
Why would a man, who is the supposed president of a free nation, bow to anyone? How does the world look at the actions taken by this man who claims to be the president of the United States?
Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard called the alleged bow “a violation of more than two centuries of tradition and protocol holding that American presidents never bow before royalty.” [ 6 ] foxnews.com
Among Muslim democrats and human rights advocates, utter dejection that the “leader of the Free World” has offered himself as a “subject” of the Saudi monarch; among Islamists, bliss over America’s seeming prostration before Salafist Islam; among international bad actors, assurance that America poses no threat; and among our allies, depression about the new systemic instability of the most dependable superpower in history. [ 7 ] commentarymagazine.com
Obama’s action has been slammed by the US media as well as by politicians who feel that the US president’s gesture was unbecoming of the country’s head. The Ottawa Citizen daily argued that the American president is supposed to be “a peer of, not subservient to, any foreign potentate“.
The Washington Times newspaper has called the incident a “shocking display of fealty to a foriegn potentate “.
…In its editorial, the daily noted: “The bow was an extraordinary protocol violation. Such an act is a traditional obeisance befitting a king’s subjects, not his peer. There is no precedent for US presidents bowing to Saudi or any other royals.” [ 8 ] arabianbusiness.com
If not any of these resolves, could it be the kind of resolve that gives immunity to terrorist and prefers terror financiers over Americans that were murdered on that day eight years ago?
Families who lost loved ones on September 11 are angry over the news that the Obama Administration has intervened to prevent alleged Saudi terror financiers from lawsuits.
…”five Saudi princes knowingly and intentionally provided financial support to al Qaeda waging war on America.”
“By urging the high court to not review lower court decisions dismissing these cases, the Obama Administration took the side of the Saudi princes over thousands of family members and survivors of the 9/ll attacks…
“The Administration’s filing mocks our system of justice and strikes a blow against the public’s right to know the facts about who financed and supported the murder of 3,000 innocent people. It undermines our fight against terrorism and suggests a green light to terrorist sympathizers the world over that they can send money to al Qaeda without having to worry that they will be held accountable in the U.S. Courts for the atrocities that result.” [ 9 ] investigativeproject.org
The Obama administration has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to protect Saudi Arabia and four of its princes from being held accountable for their alleged role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States that killed almost 3,000 Americans…
…Intelligence and past actions link the Saudi government and the four princes with al-Qaida…
“…the U.S. Government announced its opposition to allowing 9/11 victims and their families full access to the U.S. legal system in (the government’s) effort to protect Saudi Arabia and its princes from being held accountable for their role in the attack on the United States,” said Peter Leitner, who has assisted terror victims’ families successfully in suing terrorist organizations for the past 12 years.
“…the Obama administration has spat in the faces of these victims just as (Obama) prepares to leave for Egypt and Saudi Arabia while advocating for the closing of (the U.S. Guantanamo prison in Cuba) and giving full access to the U.S. court system to the terrorists currently imprisoned there,” he said. [ 10 ] wnd.com
And if it is not any of those, then could it be the resolve to celebrate Islam in America, on the day Islam attacked innocent American citizens on American soil?
…Resolution backed by CAIR urges closing schools on Muslim holidays.
It has been widely reported the New York City Council passed a resolution Tuesday recommending the school system shut down to commemorate two of the most important Muslim holidays, however the reports did not note the holidays fall on Sept. 11 in some years.
The Islamic holidays being considered for commemoration are Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr. [ 11 ] wnd.com
Final Thoughts
Mr. Obama what kind of resolve are you referring to in your speech you made just two days ago?
By the actions you are demonstrating to the American people it seems that the words you speak are nothing more than words filled with empty meaning, words that are only here to tickle the ears of the naive and foolish, words that are used to manipulate your followers into the world that no American is going to want, a world you call change, a world everyone else calls socialism.
If you truly have the best interest for this country, to uphold the constitution of this nation, then please, Mr. Obama, prove yourself; not by more of your empty words, but instead prove yourself by the steps you need to take in order to defend our constitution, to defend our nation against the new threat called Islam that attacked our nation eight years ago on September 11th, murdering 3,000 innocent American men, women and children.
Mr. Obama, no more empty filled words, it is time to start speaking the truth, it is time to start defending this nation that you swore to protect.
Source
Obama on 9/11: ‘No words can ease the ache of your hearts’ http://www.cnn.com
TR: Sir Hannon makes me tear-up a bit when he’s so optimistic about the great ”freedoms” we have here in America. Alas, he doesn’t seem to realize the huge amount of our liberty which has been squelched, and which continues to disappear at an accelerated pace under Hopenchange – compared to Britain’s long-entrenched “English Socialism” dystopia.
“UPS and FedEx are doin’ just fine,” President Barack Obama told his carefully selected audience of supporters at Tuesday’s mock town hall meeting in New Hampshire.
“It’s the post office that’s always having problems.”
Obama intended his comparison to show that a government entity can compete with private companies without destroying them, just as he claims a government health insurance company could provide healthy competition to improve private insurers.
Republicans for months rightly said that the federal government would run our healthcare system “with the compassion of the IRS and . . . the efficiency of the post office. . . .”
Echoing this on Tuesday, Obama seemed to agree that his Democratic health scheme will indeed be like the post office.
Obama spoke only days after the United States Postal Service (USPS) acknowledged that it will end 2009 $7 billion in the red. USPS threatened to close 700 local post offices and curtail Saturday mail deliveries if Congress is slow to boost its taxpayer subsidy.
In the early days of our young republic, jobs as postmasters, clerks, and letter carriers were among the “spoils” political parties doled out to reward its partisan political operatives.
Today the U.S. Postal Service is America’s second- or third-largest employer, providing 786,000 high-paying jobs handed out preferentially to military veterans and especially to politically-favored minorities. Letter-carrier union members are a ready source of cash and campaign shock troops for the Democratic Party.
Liberal Oregon now holds its elections entirely by mail. This effectively gives members of the letter carrier union the power to choose which ballots arrive to be counted. (In most other states, mailed absentee ballots now comprise more than 25 percent of those cast in typical elections.)
Likewise, Obamacare will give politically appointed bureaucrats the power to decide who does or does not get costly life-saving medical treatments.
From its beginning, the deeper purpose of the Postal Service has always been to advance federal government power — controlling development by where it used eminent domain to build “post roads,” monitoring and reading citizen communications, and sending federal government eyes and ears daily to every town and home.
The Postal Service briefly grabbed control of the first public telegraph service in America and even schemed — until politically slapped down — to charge citizens a stamp-like fee for every e-mail they sent in competition with the mails.
E-mail has now replaced nearly a quarter of what used to be mail revenue for USPS. Days before Obama’s comparison, even New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera on Aug. 8 joined the late libertarian saint Lysander Spooner in arguing that government control of the mails should be abolished.
“[A]ll over Europe,” blogged Nocera on Aug. 7, “postal services are being either partially or wholly privatized.” But Obama continues to swim dogmatically against the anti-socialist tide of history.
TR: Don’t you just love the smell of Totalitarianism when you awake each morning? One of Faux-bama’s biggest lies is “Transparency”. But as our compatriot Lynda has pointed out, it sure makes it a lot easier to marvel at the Usurper’s New Clothes. This Marxist tyrant must be stopped in his tracks. Wake Up, America!!
It didn’t take chaotic town-hall meetings, raging demonstrators and consequent brooding in various sectors of the media to bring home the truth that the campaign for a health-care bill is, to put it mildly, not going awfully well. It’s not hard now to envision the state of this crusade with just a month or two more of diligent management by the Obama team—think train wreck. It may one day be otherwise in the more perfect world of universal coverage, but for now disabilities like the tone deafness that afflicts this administration from the top down are uninsurable.
Consider former ABC reporter Linda Douglass—now the president’s communications director for health reform—who set about unmasking all the forces out there “always trying to scare people when you try to bring them health insurance reform.” People, she charged, are taking sentences out of context and otherwise working to present a misleading picture of the president’s proposals. One of her key solutions to this problem—her justly famed message encouraging citizens to contact the office at flag@whitehouse.gov if they got an email or other information about health reform “that seems fishy”—set off a riotous flow of online responses. (The word “fishy,” with its police detective tone, would have done the trick all by itself.)
These commentaries, packed with allusions to the secret police, the East German Stasi and Orwell, were mostly furious. Others quite simply hilarious. Ms. Douglass, who now has, in her public appearances, the air of a person consigned to service in a holy order, was not amused.
Neither has she seemed to entertain any second thoughts about the tenor of a message enlisting the public in a program reeking of a White House effort to set Americans against one another—the good Americans protecting the president’s health-care program from the bad Americans fighting it and undermining truth and goodness.
She intended no such outcome, doubtless. That this former journalist, now a communications director, failed to notice anything amiss in the details of that communiqué is a bit odd but not altogether surprising.
Crusades are busy endeavors, the enlistees in this one, like those in every undertaking of this White House, concerned with just one message. Which is that the Obama administration is in possession of vital answers to ills and inequities that have long afflicted American society (whether Americans know it or not), and that those opposed to those answers and that vision are cynics, or operatives of the powerful vested interests responsible for the plight Americans find themselves in (whether they know it or not), or political enemies bent on destroying the Obama administration.
It shouldn’t have been surprising, either, that the tone of much of the commentary on the town-hall protests was what it was. There was Mark Halperin for one, senior political editor for Time, bouncing off his chair, Sunday, in agitation over all the media coverage of this rowdiness—“a horrible breakdown of our political culture, our media culture” and so “bad for America,” as he told CNN’s Howard Kurtz. “I’m embarrassed about what’s going on, as an American.” The disruptions and coverage thereof distorted serious discussion, he explained. Mark Shields said much the same on Friday’s PBS NewsHour, if with less excitation, pointing out that these events were “not good for the democratic process,” and were a breakdown of civil debate.
There was no such hand-wringing over the decline of civil debate, during, say, election 2004, when cadres of organized demonstrators carrying swastika-adorned pictures of George W. Bush routinely swarmed about, and packed rallies. There was also that other “breakdown of our media culture,” that will dwarf all else as a cause for embarrassment, the town-hall coverage included, for the foreseeable future. That would be, of course, the undisguised worshipful reporting of the candidacy of Barack Obama.
That treatment, or rather its memory—like the adulation of his great mass of voters—has had its effect on this president, and not all to the good. The election over, the warming glow of those armies of supporters gone, his capacity to tolerate criticism and dissent from his policies grows thinner apace. His lectures, explaining his health-care proposals, and why they’ll be good for everybody, are clearly not going down well with his national audience.
This would have to do with the fact that the real Barack Obama—product of the academic left, social reformer with a program, is now before that audience, and what they hear in this lecture about one of the central concerns in their lives—his message freighted with generalities—they are not prepared to buy. They are not prepared to believe that our first most important concern now is health-care reform or all will go under.
The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.
He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don’t take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don’t know they want to go and being told it’s good for them.
Who would have believed that this politician celebrated, above all, for his eloquence and capacity to connect with voters would end up as president proving so profoundly tone deaf? A great many people is the answer—the same who listened to those speeches of his during the campaign, searching for their meaning.
It took this battle over health care to reveal the bloom coming off this rose, but that was coming. It began with the spectacle of the president, impelled to go abroad to apologize for his nation—repeatedly. It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town-hall meetings or the agitations of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgment of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him.
TR: Like the proverbial frog in the pot, overcome by the ever-increasingly hot water, ARE WE EVER GOING TO JUMP OUT? Or, are we now paralyzed, and will rest our fading hopes upon some miraculaous force turning down the Socialist heat?? WAKE UP – Do Something to save your country!
A new American Revolution is brewing. Secession is a peaceful, Natural Right of the Free and Independent States.
After half a century of fighting encroachments upon freedom in America, journalist Garet Garrett published “The People’s Pottage.” A year later, in 1954, he died. “The People’s Pottage” opens thus:
“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.”
Garrett wrote of a revolution within the form. While outwardly America appeared the same, a revolution within had taken place that was now irreversible. One need only glance at where we were before the New Deal, where we are and where we are headed to see how far we are off the course the Founding Fathers set for our republic.
Taxes drove the American Revolution, for we were a taxaphobic, liberty-loving people. That government is best that governs least is an Americanism. When “Silent Cal” Coolidge went home in 1929, the U.S. government was spending 3 percent of gross domestic product.
And today? Obama’s first budget will consume 28 percent of the entire GDP; state and local governments another 15 percent. While there is some overlap, in 2009, government will consume 40 percent of GDP, approaching the peak of World War II.
The deficit for 2009 is $1.8 trillion, 13 percent of the whole economy. Obama is pushing a cap-and-trade bill to cut carbon emissions that will impose huge costs on energy production, spike consumer prices and drive production offshore to China, which is opting out of Kyoto II. The Chinese are not fools.
Obama plans to repeal the Bush tax cuts and take the income tax rate to near 40 percent. Combined state and local income tax rates can run to 10 percent. For the self-employed, payroll taxes add up to 15.2 percent on the first $106,800 for all wages of all workers. Medicare takes 2.9 percent of all wages above that. Then there are the state sales taxes that can run to 8 percent, property taxes, gas taxes, excise taxes and “sin taxes” on booze, cigarettes and, soon, hot dogs and soft drinks.
Comes now national health insurance from Nancy Pelosi’s House. A surtax that runs to 5.4 percent of all earnings of the top 1 percent of Americans, who already pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes, has been sent to the Senate. Included also is an 8 percent tax on the entire payroll of small businesses that fail to provide health insurance for employees.
Other ideas on the table include taxing the health benefits that businesses provide their employees.
The D.C.-based Tax Foundation says New Yorkers could face a combined income tax rate of near 60 percent.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called George III a tyrant for having “erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”
What did George III do with his Stamp Act, Townshend Acts or tea tax to compare with what is being done to this generation of Americans by their own government?
While the hardest-working and most productive are bled, a third of all wage-earners pay no U.S. income tax, and Obama plans to free almost half of all wage-earners of all income taxes. Yet, tens of millions get Medicaid, rent supplements, free education, food stamps, welfare and an annual check from Uncle Sam called an Earned Income Tax Credit, though they never paid a nickel in income taxes.
Oh, yes. Obama also promises everybody a college education.
Coming to America to feast on this cornucopia of freebies is the world. One million to 2 million immigrants, legal and illegal, arrive every year. They come with fewer skills and less education than Americans, and consume more tax dollars than they contribute by three to one.
Wise Latina women have more babies north of the border than they do in Mexico and twice as many here as American women.
As almost all immigrants are now Third World people of color, they qualify for ethnic preferences in hiring and promotions and admissions to college over the children of Americans.
All of this would have astounded and appalled the Founding Fathers, who after all, created America – as they declared loud and clear in the Constitution – “for ourselves and our posterity.”
China saves, invests and grows at 8 percent. America, awash in debt, has a shrinking economy, a huge trade deficit, a gutted industrial base, an unemployment rate surging toward 10 percent and a money supply that’s swollen to double its size in a year. The 20th century may have been the American Century. The 21st shows another pattern.
“The United States is declining as a nation and a world power with mostly sighs and shrugs to mark this seismic event,” writes Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, in CFR’s Foreign Affairs magazine. “Astonishingly, some people do not appear to realize that the situation is all that serious.”
Even the establishment is starting to get the message.
If Simon & Garfunkel were still recording today, they might pen a hit new song, to the beat of “Mrs. Robinson,” titled “Where Have You Gone, Milton Friedman?”
The Nobel Prize-winning, free-market economist died in 2006. But Friedman was not only a brilliant theoretician, he was an articulate advocate for our free-enterprise system. President Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988.
I remember as a high school student watching his TV program on PBS, “Free to Choose.” Friedman’s ideas became the underpinnings of the Reagan revolution, not to mention Margaret Thatcher’s privatization movement that helped leapfrog Britain’s economy.
Today capitalism is under attack as never before and Milton Friedman is not here to defend it.
President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are blaming capitalist greed for the current economic crisis, seeking to make scapegoats out of the “rich,” banks, Wall Street – the entire capitalist system.
Their solution is more government, more spending, and higher taxes.
What would Milton Friedman say to that?
Well, I can share with you a video of a testy but amusing confrontation between Friedman and liberal TV talk-show host Phil Donahue that took place in 1979.
Acting like Barack Obama, Donahue asks the renowned economist, “When you see the greed and the concentration of power, did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed is a good idea to run on?”
Friedman shot back: “Is there some society we know that doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy; it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. [The audience chuckled.]”
Friedman continued: “The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus . . .
“In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, they have had capitalism and largely free trade . . .
“There is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.”
Those words are so appropriate today. [You can watch the video of Friedman's exchange with Donahue at the top of this post.]
Friedman’s point is not that capitalism is perfect, but that it is better than all the other systems. Consider that the United States has just 5 percent of the world’s population, but its free-enterprise system produces 25 percent of the world’s GDP.
If Obama gets what he wants, attacking the rich and “spreading wealth around,” the U.S. will resemble the socialist economies of Europe – and it will also mirror their low rates of growth and economic activity. Obama’s plan will not just hurt the U.S. economy, it take the steam out of the world economy’s engine.
But Milton Friedman still has more to say about Obama.
Recently, Newsmax’s sister publication, Financial Intelligence Report, included an economic analysis from market expert David Skarica.
Skarica cited Friedman’s 1992 classic work “Money Mischief.” As Skarica notes, everything that is unfolding today, including our government’s response to the current crisis, is all laid out in Friedman’s prophetic book.
“Friedman argues that, during recessions, governments turn on the printing presses,” Skarica wrote. “Interest rates plummet as governments move to inflate the money supply in response to an ensuing economic meltdown,” and the initial effects seem good.
That is, governments use spending to cover up economic ills, but that leads to rampant inflation.
Amazingly, what Friedman described is exactly what is happening today. Obama and the Democrats are unwilling to cut spending and be fiscally responsible, and instead will massively increase the money supply – which inevitably leads to inflation.
Skarica writes, “We are seeing this phenomenon unfold right now before our very eyes.”
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has said there is no problem with inflation, declaring on March 10, “We do think inflation will be low over the next couple of years.”
And just this week, it was announced the Fed pumped another $1.2 trillion into the economy!
Bernanke surely knows what Friedman explained in “Money Mischief” – that it takes at least a year after the massive expansion of the money supply for inflation to rear its ugly head. And Bernanke is well aware, as Friedman so artfully explains, that inflation causes a brutal economic “hangover,” making things actually worse in the long run.
Sadly, our biggest problem today is not the economic one, but one of leadership and character. We do not have the Milton Friedmans to rise to the challenge.
Without Simon & Garfunkel’s new song, perhaps we can just change the lyrics in “Mrs. Robinson” to “Where have you gone, Milton Friedman? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”
“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.” -George W. Bush, [his political epitaph] Dec. 16th, 2008
As GWB is swept up in the Keynesian economics revival, and hones his quest to outshine Jimmy Carter’s abysmal legacy, the Cato Institute issued this excellent video debunking this fascination with Robbin’ Hood Economics, and how it consumes wealth while redistributing it around the economy (taking your money and giving it to someone else – for your own good!).
Why don’t these government ass-clowns ever simply ”stimulate the economy” by reducing or eliminating a plethora of taxes, Big Daddy interference, onerous regulations and litigation, over-spending and over-borrowing? How about following the U.S. Constitution instead of trying to circumvent the natural laws of economics?
Folks – If this story fails to get your American blood boiling, then likely, nothing will. This absolutely STUNNING development was brought to our attention on last night’s No Compromises blogtalkradio show (listen here, 2nd hour of show covers the story) by our esteemed blogging affiliate Doctor Bulldog. He will be updating NC as this stunner unfolds.
The synopsis of this alarming story is this: There has been a movement, orchestrated mainly by Leftists (but not exclusively) since the 1970’s to throw out and rewrite our U.S. Constitution – with a newly enlightened Socialist version, of course! This is being accomplished by pushing States, one by one, to call for a new Constitutional Convention as is authorized under Article V. of the Constitution – under the guise of passing a “balanced budget” amendment. Could this just be crazy right-wing alarmism? Well, this stealthy movement has already achieved passage by 32 of the 34 states necessary to call for a new Constitutional Convention! Yes – that’s right – and just recently, the state of Ohio has been considering passage, which would bring the total to 33 (of 34). Since there is no Constitutional expiration point on these states’ calls for a Con Con, it’s a mere matter of time before the left-wing Socialists get their wish. Unless we stop them.
You may be wondering, “What’s the big deal? How could it hurt us to revise the U.S. Constitution by Convention?” Because once this process is instituted, there is no authority to stop it from steamrolling out-of-control. The delegates to this Convention would have more power than Congress. Imagine the cacophony of special interest groups, Marxists, homosexuals, grievance groups galore, and a leftist media all ripping and tearing at our “obsolete” document. The result will be like a thermo-nuclear device had taken out our venerable Constitution, and with it, all those ‘antiquated’ concepts like – INDIVIDUAL LIBERTIES, and our GOD-GIVEN Rights! Make no mistake, a “Newly Enlightened” Constitutional document resulting from any modern Con Con will be unrecognizable, riddled with Marxist ideals, and will certainly be a “living” and “breathing” constitution (meaning judges, and worse, justices can interpret its meaning on a whim, depending on how they feeeel on any particular day).
A public policy organization has issued an urgent alert stating affirmative votes are needed from only two more states before a Constitutional Convention could be assembled in which “today’s corrupt politicians and judges” could formally change the U.S. Constitution’s “‘problematic’ provisions to reflect the philosophical and social mores of our contemporary society.”"Don’t for one second doubt that delegates to a Con Con wouldn’t revise the First Amendment into a government-controlled privilege, replace the 2nd Amendment with a ‘collective’ right to self-defense, and abolish the 4th, 5th, and 10th Amendments, and the rest of the Bill of Rights,” said the warning from the American Policy Institute.
“Additions could include the non-existent separation of church and state, the ‘right’ to abortion and euthanasia, and much, much more,” the group said.
The warning comes at a time when Barack Obama, who is to be voted the next president by the Electoral College Monday, has expressed his belief the U.S. Constitution needs to be interpreted through the lens of current events.
Tom DeWeese, who runs the center and its education and grassroots work, told WND the possibilities stunned him when he discovered lawmakers in Ohio are considering a call for a Constitutional Convention. He explained that 32 other states already have taken that vote, and only one more would be needed to require Congress to name convention delegates who then would have more power than Congress itself.
“The U.S. Constitution places no restriction on the purposes for which the states can call for a convention,” the alert said. “If Ohio votes to call a Con Con, for whatever purpose, the United States will be only one state away from total destruction. And it’s a safe bet that those who hate this nation, and all She stands for, are waiting to pounce upon this opportunity to re-write our Constitution.”
DeWeese told WND that a handful of quickly responding citizens appeared at the Ohio Legislature yesterday for the meeting at which the convention resolution was supposed to be handled.
State officials suddenly decided to delay action, he said, giving those concerned by the possibilities of such a convention a little time to breathe.
According to a Fox News report, Obamahas stated repeatedly his desire for empathetic judges who “understand” the plight of minorities.
In a 2007 speech to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, he said, “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”
Obama also committed himself to respecting the Constitution but said the founding document must be interpreted in the context of current affairs and events.
Read how today’s America already has rejected the Constitution, and what you can do about it.
Old Glory, Burning
Melody Barnes, a senior domestic policy adviser to the Obama campaign, said in the Fox News report, “His view is that our society isn’t static and the law isn’t static as well. That the Constitution is a living and breathing document and that the law andthe justices who interpret it have to understand that.”
Obama has criticized Justice Clarence Thomas, regarded as a conservative member of the court, as not a strong jurist or legal thinker. And Obamavoted against both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, two appointees of President Bush who vote with Thomas on many issues.
Further, WND also reported Obama believes the Constitution is flawed, because it fails to address wealth redistribution, and he says the Supreme Court should have intervened years ago to accomplish that.
Obama said in a 2001 radio interview the Constitution is flawed in that it does not mandate or allow for redistribution of wealth.
Obama told Chicago’s public station WBEZ-FM that “redistributive change” is needed, pointing to what he regarded as a failure of the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren in its rulings on civil rights issues in the 1960s.
The Warren court, he said, failed to “break free from the essential constraints” in the U.S. Constitution and launch a major redistribution of wealth. But Obama, then an Illinois state lawmaker, said the legislative branch of government, rather than the courts, probably was the ideal avenue for accomplishing that goal.
It looks as if we are going to have to relive all of the mistakes of the 20th century one more time–let’s hope it is one last time–before we relearn the big lesson of that century: the moral and material superiority of capitalism and the disastrous consequences of socialism in all its forms.
I thought we had learned that lesson well enough already, but it turns out I was wrong. Given a few decades to recover from the collapse of the Soviet Union–and given an opportunity to take advantage of the ideological confusion and muddled pragmatism of the pro-free-market right–the left is making a serious attempt to reconstitute itself.
And it is not just any variant of the left. It is the Old Left, the mid-20th-century left of public-works giantism, ham-fisted labor union protests, and command-and-control central planning.
By the end of the 20th century, the failure of all of these policies had caused the Old Left to splinter into two groups. The New Left hippies rejected industrial socialism in favor of anti-industrial socialism, adopting environmentalism and holding up a neo-primitive lifestyle as the ideal, while the New Democrat centrists sought a “Third Way” compromise between capitalism and socialism.
But now the discredited Old Left seems to be making a roaring comeback. We can see the signs all around us.
Consider Barack Obama’s plan for up to $700 billion in New-Deal-style “public works” boondoggles. It is a good old-fashioned Keynesian “stimulus” based on the premise that you can revive the economy by spreading paper money around at random.
Yet it is now widely acknowledged that the original New Deal did not actually revive the Depression-era economy. Even under Keynes’s failed theory, the amount of FDR’s spending was not enough to stimulate the economy–and neither is the amount proposed by Obama. But that hasn’t fazed the revived Old Left. Alan Brinkley, a professor of history at Columbia University, says of the New Deal that “they didn’t spend nearly enough” and laments that “They were constrained by all kinds of traditional ideas about balanced budgets.” With Obama set to run a trillion-dollar deficit in his first year in office, it looks like those old-fashioned hang-ups have been overcome.
There is, however, one concession to the New Left in Obama’s New New Deal. Obama tries to sell the New Left environmentalist crusade as if it were an Old Left, heavy-industry, make-work program.
As I sit and ponder on the events that transpired eight years ago against our nation, it forces me wonder what ever happened to America since then.
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