To say today’s “Restoring Honor” event in Washington will be historic is an understatement.  Gauging by the biased reporting on the news pages of the New York Times and the seething, sputtering outrage from Bob Herbert and Charles Blow on the Op-Ed pages should give you a pretty good indication of the focus this event will garner.

Kate Zernike opens her report, titled “Where Dr. King Stood, Tea Party Claims His Mantle”, saying it is the ultimate “thumb in the eye” to stand on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” in the place he stood and talk about restoring honor.  How dare he?  Isn’t that what racists said of Dr. King when he stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial with these words?

“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.”

Ms. Zernike reminds us of the case of Shirley Sherrod, who was fired by the Obama administration when a videotape of her redemptive speech about how she first discriminated against a white farmer but later helped him was shown across the Internet.  She writes about video tape being heavily edited by failing to show how she mended her ways and helped that farmer.  But Ms. Zernike doesn’t finish the story where later in her speech Ms. Sherrod says that those who opposed Obama’s health care plan had racist motives because President Obama is black.  Ms. Sherrod’s redemption is far from complete.

She then says that the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights raises the specter of Jim Crow and George Wallace.  But it was the federal government that passed and enforced the Fugitive Slave laws and it was independent states of the north, exercising their states’ rights, who supported the Underground Railroad and refused to actively assist returning slaves to the South.  So states’ rights cut both ways.

She concludes that, “Even if Tea Party members are right that any racist signs are those of mischief-makers, even if Glenn Beck had chosen any other Saturday to hold his rally, it would be hard to quiet the argument about the Tea Party and race.”  It’s hard to quiet the argument because those on the left keep falsely making it.  They cannot prove racism so they feel that by repeating often enough, they can make it stick.

I was at a street fair manning a booth for a Tea Party organization this spring.  An African-American teacher approached us tentatively to ask what we were about.  I asked her if she wanted the rumors or the truth and she opted for the truth.  I told her that we were a policy based organization focusing on accountable government, fiscal responsibility, limited federal government and following the Constitution.  She said she didn’t know any of that, she got e-mails from Moveon.org all the time and before leaving she signed our e-mail list.  When the truth reaches the ears of people over the screeching of the New York Times and the main stream media, it is generally well received.  The racial of mix of the Tea Party rallies will change over time when we can speak to the folks one on one without the lies of the left.

The Opionators

Bob Herbert begins his Op-Ed piece in a very open minded fashion, “America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure.”  Thank you for sharing that, Bob, but there’s no need to pull punches here.

“There is a great deal of hatred and bigotry in this country, but it does not define the country. The daily experience of most Americans is not a bitter experience and for all of our problems we are in a much better place on these matters than we were a half century ago.”

So why to you and your fellow travelers throw down the race card every time someone disagrees with a policy, if they are not of the same race?  Object to ObamaCare, that’s racism.  Object to the stimulus, racism.  Wanting Obama to fail to turn America into a socialist states, racism straight up.  Yes there is hatred and bigotry in this country, but it is primarily coming from the left.

Not to be outdone in the outrage department, Charles Blow titled his Op-Ed piece, “I Had a Nightmare.”  Mr. Blow said the following, “I find it curious that many of the same people who object so strenuously to the Islamic cultural center proposed for Lower Manhattan, many on the grounds that it is inappropriate and disrespectful, are virtually silent on the impropriety and disrespect inherent in Beck’s giving a speech on the anniversary of King’s address.”  This would be an excellent point, if he could point to 3,000 blacks that Glenn Beck has murdered in the name of restoring honor.  But Mr. Blow can make no such connection, so his analogy to the Ground Zero mosque falls flat.  Curious indeed.

After venting his spleen, Mr. Blow suggests we re-read Dr. King’s speech “and to recommit ourselves to the nobility of righteous pursuits.”  Let’s do that.

“But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.” –“I Have a Dream Speech”

How do the actions of the left, throwing down the race card at every turn, accusing everyone who disagrees with Barack Obama to have racism at the core of that disagreement comport with not “drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred”?  It arrogantly assumes that it is impossible not to see the glorious benefit of the government running every last aspect of our lives, therefore the only reason to disagree has to be racism.  With regard to violence, where do we see the violent demonstrations on the left or the right?  Breaking windows, looting, SEIU members beating down street vendors for selling anti-Obama buttons, etc. are all on the left.  When the police show up at rallies organized by the left they show up in riot gear, at Tea Party rallies the mounted police have to decide whether to let people pet their horses or not.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” –“I Have a Dream Speech”

Didn’t America elect an African American President of the United States with 53% of the vote?  More than voted for Clinton either time, or Jimmy Carter?  Barack Obama wasn’t elected by minority votes alone.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” –“I Have a Dream Speech”

Who more closely shares that dream, Glenn Beck, or those on the left who insist that forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King gave his speech that blacks can’t get into college or get a job without affirmative action; that black families have not been destroyed by government programs like welfare that drove fathers away; that government run schools that can’t graduate its students are far better for blacks than school vouchers that will let them escape those hellholes?  Dr. King’s speech says nothing about racial preferences.  Dr. King’s speech talks about color blindness.  Dr. King’s speech says give us an equal chance.  Glenn Beck believes that.  Those on the left do not.  It is those on the left who believe African Americans cannot compete without more government programs to help them.  Glenn Beck believe they can succeed if government gets out of their way and if the left stops the lies of dependency that hold them back.  It is the New York Times, Charles Blow, Bob Herbert who wrap themselves in racial division and then say, “Why can’t we come together?”  If you want us to come together, stop standing in the way.

Republicans have to learn to stop fighting by the Marquis of Queensbury rules, while Democrats, bite, kick, pull hair, scratch and hit below the belt.  Yes, Christ told us to turn the other cheek, but he also overturned tables, formed a whip out of cords and drove the money changers from the temple.  In other words, sometimes you have the hit the bully hard between the eyes before he learns to stop being a bully.

So if the Republicans regain control of Congress in November, they should open the new Congress in January with detailed hearings on what happened to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and don’t pull any punches.  By that I mean if they need to put Andrew Cuomo in the witness chair, even if he is the governor of New York, which he probably will be, then they should do so.  It’s time to stop playing patty-cake.

For all the hoopla of the Dodd-Frank Act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were left out of the new regulations.  Oh, we’ll get to those later.  Okay, let’s get to them with the Republicans in charge.  Let’s expose how it was our government that got us into the housing mess and let’s do this before the Democrats re-write history and paper over their culpability in the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression.  It’s time to put the big lie to “it’s all Bush’s fault and Republican policies.”

The papering over has already started by none other than Franklin Raines the former head of Fannie Mae who received bonuses of over $90 million while at the helm of Fannie Mae and was also charged with cooking the books that helped him receive those bonuses.  He reached a settlement with the SEC and gave back about $1.8 million from the profits in the sale of Fannie Mae stock and gave up $5.3 million in future benefits related to his pension.  But he essentially kept the rest, what the Wall Street Journal called a “paltry settlement.” 

Mr. Raines claims the demise of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to which taxpayers have already coughed up $145 billion, was due to bad credit decisions made after he left the firm.  To put it in his own words:

 “The Journal had been warning for years that the on-balance sheet portfolios of Fannie and Freddie would lead to their demise. Mr. Carney suggests that excessive leverage was the culprit. Unfortunately, neither of these were involved. Nope. Just bad credit judgments. Decisions made, by the way, while operating under close regulatory scrutiny.”

According to the Wall Street Journal “What he doesn’t say is that Fan and Fred had a political and legal mandate to support low-income housing.”  To meet this mandate which had increasing goals each year, Fannie and Freddie had to cast a wider net to find these borrowers and the wider they cast the net the lower their standards had to be.  Thus more creative types of mortgages were created to lower the bar such as, interest only loans.  This scheme would continue to work as long as housing prices kept rising but that could not go on forever.  When the music stopped a lot of people were left standing without chairs and we all lost.  People’s credit ratings were destroyed, mortgage securities were worth far less than face value, people walked away from houses, and taxpayers were forced to pick up another “too big to fail” enterprise.  By the way, where in the Constitution does it authorize the federal government to get involved in helping people buy houses?

The secret veil put in place by the main stream media has been lifted.  With the Internet and the bloggers and cable television and talk radio, the main stream media can no longer keep information that does not comport with their agenda hidden from the American people.  The American people are energized and informed but that may not last long after the election, if we don’t continue to engage them.  Uncovering the true “swamp” that is our federal government and draining it should begin by letting the sun shine in.  So let’s do away with the good ol’ boy politics of not rocking the boat when you gain control so that they won’t rock the boat when they get it back.  If we don’t have a new class of non-incumbents who are willing to go to Washington and clean it up, really clean it up, we need to get rid of them and put new people in their place.  If that means replacing Republicans with better Republicans or Democrat incumbents with better Democrats, so be it.  We have to end the process of only being able to choose between two pathetic life time politicians who have never lived in the real world.

Two disparate news items this weekend got me thinking.  The main stream media is all abuzz with Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, even to the point of throwing the term royalty around.  It is estimated that the wedding will cost $3-$5 million, although Sally Quinn of the Washington post puts the bill at closer to $1 million.  The comparison was then made to the cost of Jenna Bush’s wedding, a mere $100,000.  This became fodder for The Joy Behar Show.  Comedian Judy Gold leaped at the opportunity to take a shot at Bush, “Yeah, well, if he could have found a way for us to pay for Jenna`s wedding, he would have done that, okay, he likes to spend other people`s money.”  An interesting perspective on other people’s money that I will return to later.

The other news items was an article in The New York Times, by Bob Herbert titled “A Sin and a Shame,” lamenting that corporations are hording cash and not hiring people and it is all so unfair, in fact, sinful.  This is while this government is spending huge amounts of money that someone will have to pay back, massive new programs like ObamaCare that we are still uncovering what that will cost, and enormous tax increases about to kick in on January 1 when the Bush tax cuts expire.  Perhaps they are hording cash for a reason?  Perhaps they are not hiring because they don’t know what any new employees will cost under these new programs, or for that matter what their existing employees are going to cost?  Perhaps it is because the latest economic reports show GDP shrinking and if that continues why would you start hiring if your business is going to slow down with the rest of the economy?

We have two very divergent views of the economy today.  One view is held by those who actually work in the private economy and the other view is held by those in the ivory towers of government, which brings me back to the weddings.  I really don’t care what the Clintons or the Bushes spend on their daughter’s weddings.  It’s their money.  But perhaps it is instructive to look at where that money came from.

George Herbert Walker Bush, Jenna’s grandfather, was born into a successful family.  His father was a banker and a Senator.  But after getting out of the Army after WWII he went to Yale and upon graduation, moved away from that family and settled in Texas to start an oil company.  He went into private business and put his own money at risk.  What that means, to those who never took that chance, is you may be successful and make a lot of money, you may be successful and make a little money, you may fail and lose your money.  Chances are greater that you will lose than win, but that is the American Dream.  If you lose, you have to start over by trying to earn and save up what you lost to try again, if you have the guts and drive.  Bush succeeded in forming Bush-Overby and later with Zapata Petroleum.  He became President of Zapata for ten years and then Chairman for another two, before going into politics.  By then he was a millionaire in his own right.

George Walker Bush, Jenna’s dad, attended public school in Midland, Texas, where his parents had settled.  He went to private school after the family moved to Houston.  He later attended Yale University and became the only president to get an MBA which he did, from Harvard.  Like his father, he went into the oil business starting several independent oil exploration companies.  He later bought a stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team for $800,000 and was instrumental in building the team’s attendance.  He later sold his stake for $15 million.  Then he went into politics.

The two Bushes know risk, know about taking chances and became millionaires on their own before going into politics.  They also learned lessons about spending money and doing so prudently. 

Bill Clinton went into politics almost immediately after getting his law degree.  He was Attorney General and then Governor of Arkansas.  As governor he had a governor’s mansion.  He ran for president and upon winning traded in his governor’s mansion for the Executive Mansion, aka the White House.  He had been on the government payroll and living in government provided housing almost his entire working life.  The sweat of the people in who paid their taxes paid him.  After leaving office, Mr. Clinton was able to write books about his experience and make speeches commanding six figures a pop.  His wife did pretty much the same.  They lived off the people and ended up very rich.  They didn’t create a product or service, they didn’t create jobs, and they didn’t meet a payroll. 

I can hear the screams from the left right now, “What do you mean he didn’t create a job or meet a payroll?”  Try this test.  If Bill Clinton’s opponent was elected rather than Bill Clinton, would there still be a government payroll and government jobs?  If yes, Bill Clinton didn’t create them.  If either of the Bushes didn’t create their companies would there be jobs at those companies or payrolls?  No.

What about some other famous politicians who tell us what to do?  Let’s look at Al Gore.  Here is another individual that spent the bulk of his career in government.  He was a member of Congress, a United States Senator, Vice President and presidential candidate.  Today he is very rich.  It is said he may become the first “green billionaire”.  If he went into his current endeavors before a life in government, would the story be the same?  Or is it because of his name, reputation, and connections that he made at the public trough, that he is wallowing in riches, and telling the rest of us to reduce our carbon footprint while his mansions consume ten times the energy of his neighbors?

Charlie Rangel spent most of his life in government.  He rose through the ranks and now has a waterfront condominium in the Dominican Republic, writes the tax laws but does not observe them, and is a wealthy man.  Conservatives don’t believe in rent control or rent stabilized apartments, but Charlie does.  After all, how can poor and middle income people afford to live in places like Manhattan if greedy landlords have their way.  So Charlie Rangel who makes $174,000 per year, plus his chairmanship pay, has not one, not two, not three, but four rent controlled apartments.  Is he poor or middle class?  No, he is the political class.  He took three adjoining rent controlled apartments and had them joined together, while the fourth apartment served, illegally, as his campaign headquarters.  What about the poor and blue collar workers who could live in Manhattan if three of your four rent controlled apartments weren’t being horded by you?  Let them eat cake.

John Kerry is in the news for trying to avoid $500,000 in taxes on his new yacht.  Here is another individual who spent his entire working life in government.  He can tell the rest of us to pay more taxes while he garners favors spending our money. He is the richest man in the Senate but with prenuptial agreements with his wife he only lists personal assets of between $400,000 and $1.8 million and joint assets with his wife of $300,000 – $600,000.  So how does he buy a $7 million yacht?  I am not suggesting anything nefarious, it’s obvious his wife paid for it, but do you think he is in touch with someone trying to make a payroll in the private sector?  You pay taxes; John Kerry has advisors to figure out how to avoid them.

So those evil corporations started by those evil men like George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush, know the value of a dollar.  They know we are not out of the woods yet and so to protect the jobs that their companies still have they are not hiring but are building their rainy day funds.  Perhaps Bob Herbert should ask why his employer is shedding jobs left and right.  Perhaps this is his safe way of doing so, but on the other hand the New York Times is hardly hording cash.  Its circulation is crashing because people like Bob Herbert are so out of touch with the rest of America; no one wants to read his rants any longer.

So perhaps Bill Clinton spends millions on Chelsea’s wedding because he didn’t learn the value of a dollar.  He lived of the government for many years and then just held out a basket and it was miraculously filled with more money than he can count.  George Bush spent $100,000 on a wedding because he knows how hard it is to earn a dollar.  What we need is less of the political class telling us what to do, and then handing us the bill and more entrepreneurial Americans who risk their own money, watch it like hawks, create jobs and generate wealth that they then reinvest in America.

Best wishes to Chelsea and Marc.

His election was a major milestone in the history of the United States.  Leaving aside his political philosophy which a number of us opposed and more are seeing that philosophy more clearly now, electing the first African American to the presidency with 53% of the popular vote no less, truly shows how far our nation has come from the dark days of slavery.

Having achieved this milestone has proved a two edged sword to the progressives and statists.  By celebrating the election of Barack Obama it also signaled the defusing of the most potent weapon in their arsenal, the race card.  How can you routinely call America a racist country when we just elected an African American President of the United States?  By winning with 53% of the popular vote, more than Bill Clinton in two elections and more than Jimmy Carter, it was clear that the black vote alone could not have elected him.  It required him winning over many white voters as well.  How do you continue to justify Affirmative Action when an African American was chosen by his fellow citizens to the most powerful position on earth?  But the progressives and the statists continue to pull the trigger on this dud, particularly where the Tea Party movement is involved, without proof and without shame.

 A New Dark Chapter?

Ironically, it is the Obama administration that is practicing a new kind of racism that the mainstream media is conspiring with them to hide.

During the 2008 election, several members of the Black Panthers dressed in paramilitary uniforms and brandishing a nightstick, stood outside of a polling place in Philadelphia intimidating voters by their physical presence and through verbal taunts.  The Black Panthers were caught on video tape and as this was a clear violation of the Voting Rights act, charges were filed against them.  J. Christian Adams, one of the attorneys at the Department of Justice handling the case called it the “easiest case I’ve ever had.”  The facts were clear, the video tape provided irrefutable evidence and the defendants didn’t show up in court to dispute the charges.  Because they didn’t show up, the judge issued a default judgment, meaning the Justice Department won the case and only the punishment remained.  That is, until the new leadership of the Justice Department weighed in.

 This case was originally filed in the last days of the Bush administration.  So with the victory in hand, the Justice attorneys handling the case were told to dismiss the charges and drop the case.  The reason given was that the “facts and the law don’t support the case.”  It was further ordered that these kinds of cases were “not going to happen out of the Civil Rights Division” of the DOJ.  In other words, where the plaintiff was white and the defendant was black, the Civil Rights Division of the Department would not pursue the case.  If a regional United States Attorney brought a case, the DOJ would permit it to go forward, but not from within the Civil Rights division.

The individuals who delivered this order were Loretta King and Steve Rosenbaum, political appointees.  Adams went further to say that Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez of lying under oath to a federal commission about the circumstances surrounding the decision to drop the probe.   The Justice Department denied Adams allegation:

 “It is not uncommon for attorneys within the department to have good faith disagreements about the appropriate course of action in a particular case, although it is regrettable when a former department attorney distorts the facts and makes baseless allegations to promote his or her agenda,” she said in a written statement.

Mere partisan politics?  Sour grapes?  You might think that until you hear from Bartle Bull, a lifelong Democrat and Civil Rights attorney who was an eye witness to the incident.  Here is an interview with Mr. Bull and Megyn Kelly of Fox News.  It is nothing less than stunning.  Interview.   He describes how one of the Black Panthers said to him and a person with him, “Now you will see what it’s like to be ruled by the black man, cracker.”

The first African American president has people in his administration who will not enforce the Voting Rights Act if the person whose rights are being violated is white.  I need not point out that if  the Ku Klux Klan was standing in front of the polling place and the Justice Department dropped the case against them what the outrage would be.  But with the mainstream media merely the propaganda arm of the administration, this news is only being carried by Fox News and on the Internet.

President Obama and Attorney General Holder must answer to this outrage.  They have to tell the American people why they refuse to carry out their sworn duty and enforce the law, particularly when the case was already won and they demanded that the charges be dropped and that no new cases would originate from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.  A great moment in American history will have a stain upon it unless President Obama immediately reverses course.

I guess that getting a tingle running up his leg only lasted so long before he had to give himself another fix.  Since talking about all the successes of the current administration seemed like a hard sell, Mr. Matthews put together a hit piece on the Tea Parties and the right, or as he calls it, the “New Right.”

On his Hardball  program, Matthews “documentary” was titled “The Rise of the New Right.”  In it he tries to paint the Tea Party movement as a fringe group of racists, gun nuts, and generally a group waiting for a reason to break into violence. 

You would be hard pressed to find a more over the top cheerleader for Barack Obama than Chris Matthews.  Matthews took advantage of his position in the media to actively work to get Obama elected, and now he is crestfallen that General Electric, CBS, and Disney/ABC do not control the news like in the good old days.  He openly attacks Fox News and blames the Internet for allowing the Tea Party to do an end run around the main stream media and get their information out.  Matthews, like big government, is smarter than you.  He knows what “news” you need to hear, and will diligently work to keep what you don’t need to know from reaching your eyes and ears.

 The Tea Party that I know has some very basic principles:

1. Fiscal responsibility
2. Accountability
3. Transparency
4. Free market solutions

 Pretty radical stuff, eh?  In a Rasmussen poll taken earlier this month, 46% of voters say the Tea Party is good for America, while 31% disagree.  Matthews doesn’t tell you this and he makes sure his “documentary” doesn’t provide the information that would let you draw that conclusion.

He reports on the militia movement and specifically mentions the Hutaree militia that plotted to kill a policeman and then those who would attend his funeral.  While constantly tying the Tea Party, and the militia to the Republicans he doesn’t mention that the one person in the Hutaree militia whose political affiliation is known was a Democrat and he voted as such.  Not that there is any linkage between what party one belongs to and being a nut-case, but a fair reporter might mention that to give an honest representation of the story.

Matthews also makes several references to violence against Democrats after the health care vote.  He neglects to say that only one case of violence resulted in an arrest.  That was for an attack against Republican Eric Cantor’s office.  Any one can get a brick and write a note on it quoting one of the Founding Fathers, but until to catch who did it and find out who they really are, you don’t know if it is an extremist on the right, or a Saul Alinsky disciple on the left who wants to discredit the Tea Party people.

Matthews liberally, no pun intended, sprinkles through his story extremists on the right, going back to the 1930s, such as Father Coughlin, but nowhere does he mention extremists on the left.  There is no profile of Louis Farrakhan, Reverend Wright, the Democrats who fought against the Civil Rights Act, while a majority of Republicans supported it.  There is no mention of our government internment of thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II.

It’s getting closer to the mid-term elections and Matthews doesn’t like seeing everything he has bet his reputation on going down in flames.  So he takes out this “hail Mary” pass to try to turn the tide against the Tea Party and scare people into staying safe with the Democrats.  But this time, the main stream media is not in control.  They can’t craft the message and force feed it to the American public.  Broadcast news and many major newspapers are losing viewers and readership daily, because Toto has pulled the curtain back on the Great and Powerful Oz that was the main stream media and exposed it for what it is, a shill for the Progressive left.

“What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

So reads the opening paragraph of Saul Alinsky’s book, “Rules for Radicals.”  Barack Obama is a follower of Saul Alinsky taking his first job out of Columbia as a community organizer in Chicago and tutored by a man named Mike Kruglik.  Kruglig described Obama this way:

“He was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation, who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a rapid-fire Socratic dialogue, nudging them to admit that they were not living up to their own standards. As with the panhandler, he could be aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better.” — “Obama’s Alinsky Jujitsu,” American Thinker, January 8, 2008 

Democrats Facing Threats After Passage of Health Care Reform

While wading through a crowd of protesters carrying a massive gavel, Nancy Pelosi was joined by several prominent black Democrats.  A racial epithet was called out from the crowd evoking a reaction from Pelosi’s companions.  The cameras caught the reaction, but not the provocateur.  Neither the police or any news organization caught the individual, but the “main stream media” immediately started linking Tea Party protesters with racism.

In the following days, CNN and others reported threats to Democrats who voted for the health care bill, including a graphic voicemail to Bart Stupak; an anonymous fax picturing a noose was sent to a black Democratic Congressman James Clyburn; Democratic Congresswoman Louise Slaughter reports a brick being thrown through the window of her district office in Niagara Falls, NY.  Very troubling indeed.

Having walked down Pennsylvania Avenue with thousands of Tea Party protesters last year, I can say they were the most orderly, principled, polite, helpful gathering of people you could imagine.  Naturally the “main stream media” reported nothing of this demonstration other than a sign or two that linked this administration to the Nazis.  So was I surprised to see this vitriol suddenly sprout up?  While I could understand the frustration with this arrogant Congress and President ignore the overwhelming will of the people, I still couldn’t grasp them going that far.

When I heard about the broken window in Congresswoman Slaughter’s district office, I thought of other protests with broken glass.  Protesters smashing windows in Seattle at a meeting of the World Trade Organization in 1999.  The G20 summit in Scotland in 2009 had protesters smashing windows.  These violent protesters represent the left, not the right. Hmmm…

Last night in Ottawa, the police cancelled a speech by Ann Coulter at the University of Ottawa, because the threat of violence became too great:

After Tuesday night, the hatred incited by Francois’ letter is no longer theoretical. The police called off my speech when the auditorium was surrounded by thousands of rioting liberals—screaming, blocking the entrance, throwing tables, demanding that my books be burned, and finally setting off the fire alarm.  

Ms. Coulter received a letter, before her speech, from the provost of the University that she could potentially be criminally liable for hate speech in Canada.  Who else spoke at the University without such admonishment?  How about Communist Angela Davis?  Hmmm…

Rules for Radicals

So what are Saul Alinsky’s instructions to radicals?  Here he outlines the purpose:

In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace…. “Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.’ This means revolution.” p.3                               

“Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing.” p.6

“A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage — the political paradise of communism.” p.10

“An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth — truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing…. To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations….”

Everything is relative and changing.  Doesn’t that sound like the left’s view of a “living and breathing” Constitution?  The Constitution is not what the Founding Fathers intended when the wrote it, but what the words mean in today’s context.  In other words, there really is no Constitution, because the Constitution means whatever you say it means today.

“The tenth rule… is you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.… It involves sifting the multiple factors which combine in creating the circumstances at any given time… Who, and how many will support the action?… If weapons are needed, then are appropriated weapons available? Availability of means determines whether you will be underground or above ground; whether you will move quickly or slowly…” p.36

Clothe it with moral garments.  Did the Democrats argue the merits of health care or did they continually fall back to stories of, for example, “a woman who had to wear her dead sister’s dentures,” said Louise Slaughter.  Or, they said that when people were asked about the details of ObamaCare, the public overwhelmingly supported it, so they are not opposed to the whole package.  Really?  I’m sure that if you picked through the programs of Hitler, Stalin, Castro, and Mao you could get similar reactions: lower unemployment, self-respect, prosperity, etc., but the full package doesn’t work, it’s a lie.

Rules for Radicals: Tactics

9. “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”

Can you say racism?  How many times has this trump card been played?  The epithet hurled from the crowd immediately sparked cries of racism and the “main stream media” tied them to the Tea Party protesters.

13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.  In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and ‘frozen.’…

The Democrats squeaked through an ugly health care bill.  The next hurdle is to get this far behind them and try to salvage the 2010 election before they are thrown from office.  Recent polls show a significant uptick in Obama’s approval, but it is all coming from Democrats.  Republicans haven’t budget and Independents are even worse.  Hmmm… what do Democrats do now?  Read Rule 13.

Pick the target: The Tea Party protesters are the most energized potent force in politics today.  They must be stopped.  Freeze it:  Have some left wing radicals, maybe some SEIU members mingle among the Tea Party protesters and shout the racial epithets and melt away.    Pelosi’s parade route was known among the Democrats.  They staged it to look like a Civil Rights march from the 1960s.  They knew the media would be there and they could see, once on site, where to stand to be heard by Pelosi & co., but not be caught on camera.  The lap dog media would immediately launch into grave concerns of the Tea Party turning ugly, “as we knew they would.”  Freeze them.

Personalize it.  What is more personal than racism?  How do you defend against a charge of racism?  Polarize it:  Paint the Tea Party as a bunch of hateful, racist, violent rednecks with guns and fair minded people will not want to associate with them.  They will drift away from the Tea Party and in the absence of another group to organize them, they hope these folks will become dejected and not turn out in November, and Nancy Pelosi can dodge a bullet and tighten her grip on the Speaker’s gavel.

Battle Back

The executive branch is responsible for enforcing the laws.  Press them to find out who did these things.  Put forth the theory that it is the left trying to discredit the Tea Party people.  After all, which is the more plausible explanation, radicals being radicals or law abiding citizens becoming crazed and dangerous?  Make them disprove the case.

This appears more dangerous and grave every day.  It’s eight months to November.  Stay vigilant and don’t let up.

Dumb

Of all the analogies that he could have picked  to sell his idea of a public health care option, President Obama chose the U.S. Postal Service. See video ( UPS and FedEx are Doing Fine).  “UPS and FedEx are doing fine, it’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”  Okaaaaaaaaay, so that is supposed to convince us that creating a health care system modeled on the post office is a good idea.  The interesting thing is that he prefaced that dumb statement by describing a public option that was “self sustaining.”  In other words, it was on an equal footing and not running deficits.  Excuse me, Mr. President, but the Postal Service is on target to lose $7 billion this year and the head of the postal service is in line for an $800,000 bonus.  Brilliant!

It also has appeared to escape the President’s notice that UPS and FedEx came into being to address the shortcomings of the postal service and the postal service has been struggling to be more like UPS and FedEx.  Express Mail, Priority Mail, does anyone believe those products would exist if FedEx didn’t exist?  The postal service was the problem, UPS and FedEx were the solution.  So Barack Obama wants to spend $1 trillion to create a problem to compete with the solutions.

Are there ways to improve healthcare? Absolutely.  Increase competition across state lines, outlaw frivolous lawsuits… hey, there’s an idea.  How about setting up a panel to decide if a lawsuit is real or frivolous?  If it is ruled frivolous hit the law firm that brought it with 3x the expenses of the other side.  You would kill two birds with one stone.  Sharply curtail or eliminate frivolous lawsuits and dry up donations to the Democrats who are dead set on having government run every detail of our lives.

Dumber

Just when you thought President Obama and the main stream media in his pocket could downplay the Biden-like  postal gaffe, along comes Jesse Jackson, Jr., to explain what Barack Obama really meant.  See video here (Jesse Jackson, Jr. explains).  How more scary can it be to think that someone so ignorant of the world around him and economics gets to vote on a government takeover of 1/6 of the U.S. economy.  Let me take it point by point.

• “The public option is a stamp, it’s e-mail” – the last time I looked e-mail was private, not public, perhaps that’s why everyone uses it and it work’s exceedingly well.
• “Because of e-mail and because of the postal system, it keeps DHL from charging $100 for an overnight letter” — er, no.  First of all e-mail, which is private Congressman, is a complementary service to overnight. You can overnight a cell phone to some one, you can’t e-mail it to them.  If you are legally required to have a handwritten signature, you can’t e-mail that.  Got it?  Second point, the lack of performance from the postal service is what created a market for DHL, UPS, and FedEx.  The stamp doesn’t keep DHL form charging $100 for an overnight letter, it is UPS and FedEx that keeps DHL from charging $100 for an overnight letter by charging less.  That is called competition, it is called capitalism, it is called a free economy.

He also said this, which is not in the video:

“The post office is universal. It reaches the rural areas. It reaches the urban areas. It reaches where DHL, and UPS, and Fedex will not go. And so in the barrios and the ghettos and the trailer parks of our nation…”

We don’t know if DHL, and UPS, and FedEx would go there because it is ILLEGAL to compete with the post office for first class mail.  Doesn’t he know this?  When facing more competition companies in a free economy tend to cut prices, but what has happened to the price of a first class stamp?  The price of a first class stamp has increased 440% since 1975.

Public Reaction

These two “sales pitches” alone should have you run screaming to the nearest town hall meeting or tea party event.  Pelosi says these town hall meetings are organized events?  Well I guess they are.  They are organized by the colossal stupidity of Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Schumer, Dowd, Obama, Jackson Jr., thinking they could slip this by unnoticed by the American people.  The American people are fed up with them and they are not going to take it anymore.

Just what is a czar anyway?  And I am not talking about the Russian royal family.  A czar is essentially a presidential advisor.  Take a moment to think about that.  Why does President Obama need to appoint 32, give or take, czars in his administration?  Could it be that he really, really needs a lot of advising?

In the campaign, the main stream media, somehow diverted the attention away from Obama’s glaring lack of experience as the Presidential candidate and put all their focus on Sarah Palin’s “lack of experience.”  Sarah Palin had more executive experience as a sitting governor and I emphasize executive experience, than Obama, Biden, and McCain combined.

But the media tut-tutted, and said “it’s only Alaska,” as for her mayoral experience, “it was a very small town.”  When Obama slipped his teleprompter and tried to claim he was running a very large organization, his campaign, it was laughable.  But don’t worry, he had Joe Biden to lean on.  I feel better.

Presidents and The Experience They Brought With Them

Let’s take a look back at past elected presidents and the executive experience they brought to office:

• George W. Bush — Governor of  Texas
• Bill Clinton — Governor of Arkansas
• George H. W. Bush — Vice President of the United States, Head of the CIA
• Ronald Reagan — Governor of California
• Jimmy Carter — Governor of Georgia
• Richard Nixon — Vice President of the United States
• Lyndon Johnson — Vice President of the United States
• John F. Kennedy — None.  He was a legislator and his inexperience nearly got us annihilated with the Cuban Missile Crisis, following the Bay of Pigs, and an embarrassing showdown with Khrushchev
• Dwight D. Eisenhower — Five star general in command of all Allied Forces in Europe in World War II
• Harry Truman — Vice President of the United States
• Franklin D. Roosevelt — Governor of New York , Secretary of the Navy
• Herbert Hoover — Secretary of Commerce
• Calvin Coolidge — Vice President of the United States, Governor of Massachusetts
• Warren G. Harding — Lieutenant Governor of Ohio
• Woodrow Wilson — Governor of New Jersey, President of Princeton University
• William Howard Taft –  Secretary of War
• Theodore Roosevelt — Vice President of the United States, Governor of New York, Assistant Secretary of the Navy

Legislators Versus Executives

So, from the beginning of the 20th Century until the election of Barack Obama, only once has a  president with only legislative experience been elected, John F. Kennedy.  Nikita Khrushchev took advantage of Kennedy’s inexperience in their first summit in Vienna, and then there was the aborted Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the attempted overthrow of Castro.  On top of those two building blocks we got the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought us closer than we have ever been to thermonuclear obliteration.

The Eternal Campaign

President Obama is no different.  He has the least experience of any president since 1900.  He effectively was only a United States Senator for two years, as he was busy campaigning for the next two years and resigned his last two years after being elected president.  So what does he do?  He does what he is comfortable doing and what he is good at, campaigning.  He has held more press conferences in six months than his predecessor did in eight years.  Who is running the show while Obama is running around?  Is it Nancy Pelosi?  Rahm Emmanual?  His programs are falling apart.  The stimulus isn’t working and more Americans say that it has hurt the economy rather than helped it (31%-25%) and that the rest of it should be canceled.  His cap and trade plan is opposed by most Americans (56%) who don’t want to pay more in taxes to fight global warming.  His government takeover of our health care is opposed by most Americans (53%-44%) and yet he presses on, figuring that with enough campaigning the American people will be won over.

This may be a long slog, waiting for 2012 and hoping our country does not get destroyed by all the power grabbing characters in Congress, who don’t care a whit about us, only about increasing the powerful control they have over our lives.  We have the fight of our lives on our hands preventing the taking of our liberties.

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, entitled, “What You Might Not Know About the Recovery,” that might more appropriately be entitled, “What I Don’t Know About the Recovery,” Joe Biden educates us on the stimulus.  It’s typical after the fact political obfuscation to try to convince people that they are not really seeing what they see with their own two eyes.

He begins in typical fashion going back to when he and Barack Obama took office, but avoids mentioning President Bush by name:

We still have a long way to go, but clearly we are closer to recovery today than we were in January.

This is a true statement, but I would argue that this is in spite of the $787 billion of our money squandered on the stimulus plan, while Mr. Biden says it is because of it.  It is instructive to see how someone begins their defense of an issue and Mr. Biden begins by saying that not all of our $787 billion is being spent on pork barrel projects.

Notwithstanding this progress, the nature of the Recovery Act remains misunderstood by many, and misconstrued by others: critics have suggested that the entire $787 billion is being spent on pet programs. As the person leading the administration’s efforts to put the Recovery Act into effect, I want to set the record straight.

He takes up the position that the statists typically do, that we are too stupid to understand.  This is complex stuff, America, way over your head.  You need us in the political class to take care of this for you.  Notice he didn’t say there was no pork barrel spending.  He says that not the entire $787 billion is being spent on pet projects. (Don’t forget the $30 million for Nancy Pelosi’s salt marsh harvest mouse).  Feel better?

Tax Cuts?

He says the single largest part of the recovery act is tax cuts, more than one third.  Huh?  Does he mean the $8 per week in lower payroll taxes?  That’s going to stimulate the economy?  At the same time they are finding trillions, TRILLIONS, in new taxes and spending through Cap and Trade, Heath Care reform, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, that will dwarf the paltry $8 per week that people are probably saving, rather than spending, if they even notice it at all.

Transfer Payments

The second largest chunk, Mr. Biden tells us, is for transfer payments.  In other words, money from the federal government given to state and local governments. Where do all governments get their money from?  Us.  So taking our money in federal taxes and giving it to state and local governments helps us exactly how?  Don’t forget the portion of each dollar that gets lost along the way as each bureaucracy handles it.

What are these transfer payments going to be used for?  Uncle Joe tells us:

The money is allowing state governments to avoid laying off teachers (14,000 in New York City alone), firefighters and police officers and preventing states’ budget gaps from growing wider.

The dictionary defines recovery as returning to health, consciousness, etc.  This part of the stimulus does nothing to stimulate the economy.  It’s another one of the Obama administration’s wonderful fictions about saving jobs.  As the economy continues to shed jobs even above the level that the Obama administration told us it would go without the stimulus Biden boasts that they saved the jobs of government workers; union workers; Democratic voters.  Also it helps bloated state governments that have mismanaged their finances from having to make fiscally responsible decisions but keeping them fat, dumb, and happy.  By the way, which states seems to be in the most financial trouble?  California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan?  Aren’t those all “blue” states?  So is the Obama adminisitration helping America or helping themselves?

On Track?

Mr. Biden says that we are on track and that 25% of the funds have been committed.  What exactly does that mean, committed?  If you go to Recovery.gov, you will see that as of this week, only 8.5% of the money has actually been spent.  Give Mr. Biden a calculator, please.  With the three chunks that the Vice President says comprise the stimulus: tax cuts, transfer payments, and infrastructure projects, and that signs of recovery are due to the stimulus, how can the stimulus have that kind of affect when only 8.5% of the money has been spent?

The Resiliency of the American Economy

The American economy is the envy of the world.  It is resilient beyond description.  It is recovering on its own, despite government interference, and the government meddling that caused this recession.  The American people are no longer being fooled by the smooth talking Barack and Joe Show.  A Rasmussen poll shows that only 25% of the American people believe that the stimulus has helped the economy.  If that’s not bad enough 31% say that the stimulus has actually hurt the economy.  On top of that 45% say the rest of the stimulus should be cancelled.

The Stupid American People

With 92% of the stimulus yet to be spent 9% more Americans say cancel the rest than say to keep going.  So Mr. Biden grabs the op-ed page of the New York Times to, sigh, lecture the American people once again on how they misunderstand, and misconstrue what your benevolent, socialist leaning government is trying to do for you.  How ungrateful can you be?  If you people don’t get it, then the president and vice president will just have to take over the rest of the economy and set you all straight.  They will tell you how much you can earn, what cars to buy, what food to eat, what kind of light bulbs to put in your house, control how much energy you can use in your house through the smart grid, what medical treatment you can have, and when you have to die.

The Sleeping Giant Awakes

The American people have been charmed by Barack Obama as he is a very charming man.  He is an historic president.  But they are starting to notice the tea parties, the abdication of the main stream media to do their job, the warnings about what is happening to their country and they are starting to pay attention.  The more they see and hear the more Obama’s approval ratings drop.  So he pushes harder and faster.  It will be a close race to see if President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid can ram through their agenda and slam the door behind them, or if we can wrestle back control of our liberties and send these people packing.

It’s time to brush off the Constitution, read the 10th amendment, and start stripping the federal government back down to the size the founders envisioned.  That will give more power to the states and the people and make government more accountable.  Face it, when your Congressman represents several hundred thousand constituents and their voice is only one of 435 in the House of Representatives, is it any wonder that the founders gave them only the powers spelled out in the Constitution.  They believed that effective government has to be responsive to the people.  That is impossible in Washington.  It is too big.  It is run by too many unelected career bureaucrats.  It has too much power to tax us, regulate us, spend our tax dollars on things to which we are morally opposed, and interfere with our liberties.

This is a critical time in our history and time to roll back the unrelenting growth of government and shrink it down to size.

The press is sleepwalking.  As I have been reading the press reports concerning the crisis in Honduras, I have been struck by the lack of interest by the press in the full picture.  Other than Mary Anastasia O’Grady at the Wall Street Journal, no journalist seems to care about the facts in Honduras and whether this is truly a coup or following the rule of law and thwarting a dictatorial takeover of the government.

It seems like Honduras is lined up on one side and all the world on the other, and the uncontested facts on the ground tilt in Honduras’ favor.  Castro, Chavez, and their leftist brethren, the OAS, and the Obama administration all seem to be backing the dictator wannabe Zalaya.  It is quite a contrast to how the Obama administration dragged it’s feet in supporting Iran and now it is standing shoulder to shoulder with Hugo Chavez.  And the main stream media lazily goes along.

With Fidel Castro at the end of his life perhaps some thought the leftest threat to the hemisphere coming to a close.  However there is a new threat in Hugo Chavez.  The difference is that Castro’s Cuba was a ward of the Soviet Union and once they could no longer afford to support him, Castro’s relevance began to wane.  But Chavez has oil and does not need handouts and so is much more dangerous.

“This is a moment when the U.S. ought to be on the side of the rule of law, which the Honduran court and Congress upheld. If Washington does not reverse course, it will be one more act of appeasement toward an ambitious and increasingly dangerous dictator.” – O’Grady, WSJ, 07/06/2009

The World is Watching

The world is watching and taking the measure of Obama, and when push comes to shove they will choose where their best interests lie.  If we will not stand behind democracy in our hemisphere, then other countries will try to cut the best deal they can with Chavez.  North Korea gets bolder by the day.  Iran kills its citizens and Obama wants to keep the door open to dialog.  Weakness abounds and everyone can see it.