Having choked off our ability to produce oil both onshore and offshore, Oba-Hussein is now shutting down our use of coal - even CLEAN coal technology. Final strangle hold on our throats to bring America down - not just to its knees but all the way down to flat on the ground.
Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu has launched the next phase of the White House’s publicly stated agenda to bankrupt the coal industry via EPA regulations after announcing the prospect of “massive” coal plant closures even as Texas and other states suffer rolling blackouts as a result of maxed-out power plants that cannot cope with demand.
The Obama administration’s strict enforcement of draconian EPA regulations has led to new clean-burning coal-fired plants being mothballed and other existing ones being shut down, which has in turn led to Texas and other states becoming energy-dependent, leading to shortages and blackouts exacerbated by freezing temperatures.
Despite White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer’s brazen lie in claiming that the blackouts are solely a result of “mechanical failures,” the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the agency that oversees the state’s power, confirmed this morning that the threat of blackouts was ongoing as a result of a “maxed out grid”.
This “maxed out grid” is a consequence of federally enforced EPA restrictions that have led to the delay, mothballing and closing down of coal-fired plants. In Texas, approval for the much-needed Las Brisas Energy Center has been delayed for 3 years as a result of EPA meddling in Texas’ energy policy.
A federal court ruling last month gave the EPA permission to proceed with greenhouse gas regulation in Texas, temporarily superseding Texas’ non-compliance with the new regulations which came into force on January 2. The White House’s claim that EPA regulations are not currently affecting Texas is a complete fabrication.
Now White House Energy Secretary Steven Chu has made it clear that “massive” amounts of coal-fired plants in the United States will be closed down over the next five to eight years.
Read More-http://is.gd/wRi3pu
Friday, February 11, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
NEW UNIVERSAL FLU VACCINE
Flu breakthrough promises a vaccine to kill all strains ... jab targets ... every type
By Alok Jha
A team at Oxford University has had success testing a vaccine that can neuter any strain of flu virus. Photograph: Science Photo Library
The treatment ... targets a different part of the flu virus to traditional vaccines, meaning it does not need to be expensively reformulated every year to match the most prevalent virus that is circulating the world.
Developed by a team led by Dr Sarah Gilbert at Oxford's Jenner Institute, the vaccine targets proteins inside the flu virus that are common across all strains, instead of those that sit on the virus's external coat, which are liable to mutate.
If used widely a universal flu vaccine could prevent pandemics... and end the need for a seasonal flu jab.
The process of developing a seasonal vaccine takes at least four months and if the flu strain is highly pathogenic – as in 1918 when millions of people died – the delay means more people get sick and die before the vaccine is ready.
While traditional vaccines prompt the body to create antibodies, Gilbert's vaccine boosts the number of the body's T-cells, another key part of the immune system. These can identify and destroy body cells that have been infected by a virus.
Though a small study, it was significant in that it was the first vaccine of its type to be tested on people.
It is believed that the vaccine could provide better protection against flu for older people. The Jenner Institute scientists are already testing it on people over 50, a group that does not respond so well to traditional vaccines.
By Alok Jha
The treatment ... targets a different part of the flu virus to traditional vaccines, meaning it does not need to be expensively reformulated every year to match the most prevalent virus that is circulating the world.
Developed by a team led by Dr Sarah Gilbert at Oxford's Jenner Institute, the vaccine targets proteins inside the flu virus that are common across all strains, instead of those that sit on the virus's external coat, which are liable to mutate.
If used widely a universal flu vaccine could prevent pandemics... and end the need for a seasonal flu jab.
The process of developing a seasonal vaccine takes at least four months and if the flu strain is highly pathogenic – as in 1918 when millions of people died – the delay means more people get sick and die before the vaccine is ready.
While traditional vaccines prompt the body to create antibodies, Gilbert's vaccine boosts the number of the body's T-cells, another key part of the immune system. These can identify and destroy body cells that have been infected by a virus.
Though a small study, it was significant in that it was the first vaccine of its type to be tested on people.
It is believed that the vaccine could provide better protection against flu for older people. The Jenner Institute scientists are already testing it on people over 50, a group that does not respond so well to traditional vaccines.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
OBAMA'S "C" WORD "CHANGE" IS REALLY "C for CANCER"
YOU HAD CONFIDENCE IN OBAMA AND HIS CHANGE- As time goes on you may wish to revise your belief.
By Kyle-Anne Shiver
I overcame my incredulity in Nov. of 2007 when I saw what Obama brought to Nairobi, Kenya in support of the Somali Muslim Brotherhood through the Orange Party and his cousin Rial Odinga , whose campaign Obama ran and supported.
The result was 15,000 genocidal deaths; and so the pattern of Obama liberal fascist “into the steets” continues in Cairo, in the cause of a false democratic movement.Its all about the subjugation of our weaker US allies by the Muslim Brotherhood, and Obama’s goals are strategic.
And to think that Obama has the power to order the US Marines into the middle of his fiascos. I shudder.
These links describe Obama’s role perfectly in the liberal fascist movement centered in Chicago and now resident in Washington.Obama may indeed be stupid, but not in the way you might think. I think he is stupid for traducing the entire Western Alliance.It is only a matter of time before Obama turns this same method on his political opponents here at home. Will you be strong enough to stay the course
of liberty?
ex-CIA Agent Reveals: “Muslim Brotherhood” has infiltrated Obama Administration ( excellent video summary):
http://notalemming.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/ex-cia-agent-reveals-muslim-brotherhood-has-infiltrated-obama-administration/
*********************************************
Barack Obama, the Quintessential Liberal Fascist
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html
They fear that the development and building of People’s (community) Organizations is the building of a vast power group which may fall prey to a fascistic demagogue who will seize leadership and control and turn an organization into a Frankenstein’s monster against democracy.”
- Saul Alinsky responding to his critics, Reveille for Radicals; p. 199
When Saul Alinsky began building his community-organization movement in 1930s Chicago, observers were watching Alinsky with one eye, while with the other eye observing the building of communist and fascist movements in Europe. It wasn’t hard then to see in Alinsky’s programs at home, elements of the people’s revolution from Russia, as well as some of the same “in your face” tactics being employed by Hitler’s Brownshirts.
What Alinsky’s critics saw was the burgeoning of a national movement, the carefully manipulated construction of people’s organizations, which all had two elements in common: (1) a collectivist creed, which denied the existence of personal responsibility; and (2) an amoral dogma, in which all means were justified by an imaginary utopian end.
While most modern Americans remember well Hitler’s Holocaust and the Cold War waged by a solid U.S.S.R., many of these same Americans have swallowed some false history regarding the movements that spawned such widespread, horrendous results. In what may be regarded as the most triumphant propaganda victory of our time, fascism has been scrubbed of all its Marxist roots, while communism has been scrubbed of its millions of callous murders.
This post-WWII propaganda coup undeniably set the stage for the early Alinsky critics’ most feared eventuality, that the massive organizations could be shrewdly adopted by a fascist demagogue, someone who could “seize leadership and control” and turn them into a “Frankenstein’s monster against democracy.”
But perhaps the most cunning propaganda feat in history has been undertaken for the past 8 years. As Jonah Goldberg expertly expounds in his book, Liberal Fascism, American left-wing ideologues have managed to dissociate themselves from all the horrors of fascism with a “brilliant rhetorical maneuver.” They’ve done it by “claiming that their opponents are the fascists.”
Alinsky himself employed this method, quite deviously. Alinsky biographer, Sanford D. Horwitt provides an anecdote using precisely this diabolical tactic to deceive the people. From Horwitt’s Let Them Call Me Rebel:
“...in the spring of 1972, at Tulane University...students asked Alinsky to help plan a protest of a scheduled speech by George H. W. Bush, then U.S. representative to the United Nations - a speech likely to include a defense of the Nixon administration’s Vietnam War policies. The students told Alinsky they were thinking about picketing or disrupting Bush’s address. That’s the wrong approach, he rejoined, not very creative - and besides causing a disruption might get them thrown out of school. He told them, instead, to go to hear the speech dressed as members of the Ku Klux Klan, and whenever Bush said something in defense of the Vietnam War, they should cheer and wave placards reading, ‘The KKK supports Bush.’ And that is what they did, with very successful, attention-getting results.”
In what may eventually prove to be a devious rhetorical feat of monstrous proportions, while the left has been indulging and fostering the “Bush Is Hitler” meme, they may have just put a genuine ideological fascist heir in the White House.
There is inherent danger in making scurrilous comparisons (as were perpetrated unceasingly against George W. Bush), but there seem to be some very worrisome signs in the rise of Barack Obama that we Americans would be foolish to ignore.
Obama, the Closer
As I put forth last year in “Obama, the Closer”, Barack Obama, did not start his movement; Alinsky did.
Nor did Obama amass the organizations that propelled him. As detailed by Heidi J. Swarts, in her book, Organizing Urban America, the movement begun by Saul Alinsky in the 1930s has morphed into thousands of secular and faith-based leftist political organizations. ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has perhaps the highest public profile, is most reputed for radicalism, and is the organization with which Barack Obama was first aligned. But ACORN is the mere tip of a veritable iceberg of Alinsky-styled community organizations that sweep across the entire United States and make up the backbone of faith-based progressive movements as well.
These euphemistically called “community” organizations have next to nothing to do with improving the communities and everything to do with politics, primarily strong-arming government money to advance their political aims.
Prior to Reagan’s election, these groups worked independently for the most part, each seeking to effect local change towards leftist ends.
But with Reagan’s victory, ACORN founding member Wade Rathke sent out a memo (published by Swarts; Organizing Urban America; p. 29) that would reverberate all the way to Barack Obama’s moment. ACORN had been behaving as a sort of “Lone Ranger of the Left” for too long, wrote Rathke. Ronald Reagan had formed a coalition among the middle-class that threatened to bring greater prosperity without left-wing Statists calling the shots. Rathke put out the call to the ACORN troops to stop antagonizing those who would be allies, especially unions and church organizations, once shunned by ACORN as too placid for the real fight for power. For the next 25 years, the community organization network built, proliferated and formed a solid, nation-wide base of political strength, purely according to Alinsky’s original vision, and all just waiting for the right candidate to tap into it and lead it.
When folks from all corners of America proclaimed, seemingly with one voice, Barack is the “One we’ve been waiting for,” they were speaking out of the vast Alinsky-originated network.
Neither did Barack Obama invent the political “ideology of change,” nor design its carefully crafted propaganda. While media folks talked of the tingles up their legs and the brilliant rhetoric of Barack Obama, they were heralding the speaker only, not the creator of the movement and its slogans. That would have been Saul Alinsky, the man who took fascism and cunningly made it appear to casual observers every bit as American as apple pie.
Barack Obama is merely the movement’s closer, the quintessential liberal fascist with a teleprompter.
Alinsky’s Ideology of Change: The Third Way
Goldberg fastidiously notes the comparison between Alinsky’s “in your face” rules for radicals, studied and perfected by Barack Obama, and shows them to have profoundly fascist roots:
“...there’s no disputing that vast swaths of his (Alinsky’s) writings are indistinguishable from the fascist rhetoric of the 1920s and 1930s...His worldview is distinctly fascistic.
Life is defined by war, contests of power, the imposition of will.
Moreover, Alinsky shares with the fascists and pragmatists of yore a bedrock hostility to dogma. All he believes in are the desired ends of the movement, which he regards as the source of life’s meaning...But what comes through most is his unbridled love of power. Power is a good in its own right for Alinsky. Ours ‘is a world not of angels but of angles,’ he proclaims in Rules for Radicals, ‘where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles.”
Saul Alinsky was the man who transformed politics in America into all-out war mode. Alinsky’s tenth rule of the ethics of means: “You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.” All’s fair in love and war, and politics, to Alinsky, was war.
“A People’s (community) Organization is not a philanthropic plaything or a social service’s ameliorative gesture. It is a deep, hard-driving force, striking and cutting at the very roots of all the evils which beset the people. It thinks and acts in terms of social surgery and not cosmetic cover-ups.
A People’s Organization is dedicated to an eternal war. A war is not an intellectual debate, and in the war against social evils there are no rules of fair play.”
Saul Alinsky; Reveille for Radicals; p. 133
Alinsky includes an entire section in Rules for Radicals on “The Ideology of Change.” The watchword of the Obama campaign was “change.” Just as Hitler mobilized the masses with a calculatingly undefined demand for “change,” so did Alinsky disciple, Barack Obama.
“Everything must be different!” or “Alles muss anders sein!,” Hitler’s own campaign slogan, morphed into “Unite for Change,” and the Obama transition team’s change.gov. Even the idea of a vast “movement” was borrowed from Hitler. As Goldberg states, Hitler used the phrase, “the Movement,” more than 200 times in Mein Kampf.
The word ‘movement’ itself is instructive. Movement, unlike progress, doesn’t imply a fixed destination. Rather, it takes it as a given that any change is better.
(Goldberg; Liberal Fascism; p. 176)
Perhaps the most intoxicating allure to the fascist demagogue and his movement for undefined change is its misleadingly conciliatory flavor. Barack Obama continually, throughout his campaign and even now, portrays himself as the Third Way between the cantankerous factions that have polarized America for the past 80 years, since liberal fascism took root as the Progressive Movement.
Obama claimed that Bush was too much the ideologue, that his policies were driven by the Christian right, involved “false choices” between all-out war on the one hand and diplomacy on the other, between the welfare state and cold-hearted, do-nothing conservatism, between absolute sovereignty and cowardly submission to the global community, between doing all and doing nothing. And if any of this gibberish were a true reflection of our political disagreements, Obama would be somewhat correct. But as any sentient person knows, this radical presentation of Obama’s is absolutely false. That gets lost, though, in the leader’s conciliatory tone.
What must not get lost, however, is the very real fact that this Third Way movement for change is as fascist as anything we have ever seen in the USA. As Alinsky described his own “Ideology of Change,” the lure is in the claim that the leader has no ideology that would confine his outlook to hard choices between what is moral or immoral, that there are no boundaries set by either religion or politics, that everything can change and the only thing that matters is one’s end intention to do something good.
As Hitler, before Alinsky, proclaimed, “Our program is to govern,” not delve into theory and dogma. This is in itself very appealing, especially to an electorate sick of the contentiousness of the past decade. This undefined “ideology of change” for the sake of change, for some action that will break through the roadblocks of polarization, has tremendous allure.
But Goldberg bursts that bubble:
The ‘middle way’ sounds moderate and un-radical. Its appeal is that it sounds unideological and freethinking. But philosophically the Third Way is not mere difference splitting; it is utopian and authoritarian. Its utopian aspect becomes manifest in its antagonism to the idea that politics is about trade-offs. The Third Wayer says that there are no false choices -‘I refuse to accept that X should come at the expense of Y.’ The Third Way holds that we can have capitalism and socialism, individual liberty and absolute unity. Fascist movements are implicitly utopian because they - like communist and heretical Christian movements — assume that with just the right arrangement of policies, all contradictions can be rectified.
(Goldberg; Liberal Fascism; p. 130)
Of course, thinking people — when they are indeed thinking — know this is an utterly false promise. Life will never be made perfect because all human beings are imperfect.
Unity, the Diabolical Lure
What of this longed-for unity then? Barack Obama proclaimed he was leading a movement of people “united for change.” What is the appeal of unity?
The modern liberal fascist seeks that state between mother and child which exists early on before the child seeks his own independence, before mother must set herself at odds with him. It is the perfectly secure state of childhood where all is lovely and peaceful and nurturing, but cannot continue indefinitely if the child is to be prepared to face a world of difficulty and hard choices. Nevertheless, the yearning continues. It is this primordial yearning which sets itself in the crosshairs of the fascist demagogue.
But in adult life, this type of unity is anything but desirable, anything but virtuous. As Goldberg states, however, “elevation of unity as the highest social value is a core tenet of fascism and all leftist ideologies.”
The allure of this mystical unity is so great that its demand to sacrifice reason and thought on the false altar of infantile security is seemingly lost to many. But as Goldberg also reminds us, “unity is, at best, morally neutral and often a source of irrationality and groupthink.”
Rampaging mobs are unified. The Mafia is unified. Marauding barbarians bent on rape and pillage are unified. Meanwhile, civilized people have disagreements, and small-d democrats have arguments. Classical liberalism is based on this fundamental insight, which is why fascism was always anti-liberal.
Liberalism rejected the idea that unity is more valuable than individuality. For fascists and other leftists, meaning and authenticity are found in collective enterprises - of class, nation, or race - and the state is there to enforce that meaning on everyone without the hindrance of debate.
(Goldberg; Liberal Fascism; p. 172)
Just as the healthy relationship between parent and developing child demands friction, so does the healthy relationship between truly liberal citizens. Unity is the siren song of tyranny, not the call to genuine progress.
Fascism: The Two Birds with One Stone Approach
I think of Obama’s liberal fascism as a cancer that attempts to kill the two birds of American exceptionalism with one stone. It is a deviously appealing Third Way that in the end, if allowed to triumph completely, kills both individual liberty and Judeo/Christian religion with its single stone.
And, indeed this was the precise goal of Adolph Hitler. Unlike the outspoken hatred of private property and religion espoused by communists under Lenin and Stalin, Hitler preferred the more moderate-seeming incremental takeover of private enterprise in the interest of the “common good,” and the slow-death of Judeo/Christian religion by chipping away at it and replacing the people’s dependence upon God gradually with reliance on the state (Hitler).
[Note: Hitler’s Holocaust was based on the Progressive Eugenics principles set forth by Social Darwinist scientists and social engineers of the 1920s, widely accepted both in Europe and in the United States. Religion was not at the core of the Holocaust; race was. However, Hitler’s other chief aim was to destroy the Judeo/Christian religions, which he believed had ruined the Germanic race’s world predominance.]
Of course, as the German people were duped into giving Hitler totalitarian powers to work his magic “change,” he took off the kid gloves and accelerated the program.
In the end, however slow the process, however seemingly benign the growth of the state may seem, liberal fascism has the same result of all tyrannies before it: hell on earth for most and a self-indulgent feast for the Statists in power.
As Barack Obama speaks, thinking Americans ought to hear the echoes of past fascist demagogues and remember. Remember.
When Barack Obama promises “collective redemption” through his profligate spending programs and vast overtures to a new world order built on love for our fellow man, we ought to shudder not swoon.
We ought to remember that healthy global relationships are built upon respect, not all-encompassing love, and that redemption for one’s soul is a commodity the state is not empowered to offer.
As Pope Benedict XVI has so presciently warned:
Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic.
Be not fooled, America. The movement, which appears most benign is instead the most malignant growth ever seen on our soil. It’s a cancer that will kill, and however slowly it grows or however nice it may look on the surface, doesn’t change a thing.
Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at kyleanneshiver@gmail.com .
By Kyle-Anne Shiver
I overcame my incredulity in Nov. of 2007 when I saw what Obama brought to Nairobi, Kenya in support of the Somali Muslim Brotherhood through the Orange Party and his cousin Rial Odinga , whose campaign Obama ran and supported.
The result was 15,000 genocidal deaths; and so the pattern of Obama liberal fascist “into the steets” continues in Cairo, in the cause of a false democratic movement.Its all about the subjugation of our weaker US allies by the Muslim Brotherhood, and Obama’s goals are strategic.
And to think that Obama has the power to order the US Marines into the middle of his fiascos. I shudder.
These links describe Obama’s role perfectly in the liberal fascist movement centered in Chicago and now resident in Washington.Obama may indeed be stupid, but not in the way you might think. I think he is stupid for traducing the entire Western Alliance.It is only a matter of time before Obama turns this same method on his political opponents here at home. Will you be strong enough to stay the course
of liberty?
ex-CIA Agent Reveals: “Muslim Brotherhood” has infiltrated Obama Administration ( excellent video summary):
http://notalemming.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/ex-cia-agent-reveals-muslim-brotherhood-has-infiltrated-obama-administration/
*********************************************
Barack Obama, the Quintessential Liberal Fascist
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html
They fear that the development and building of People’s (community) Organizations is the building of a vast power group which may fall prey to a fascistic demagogue who will seize leadership and control and turn an organization into a Frankenstein’s monster against democracy.”
- Saul Alinsky responding to his critics, Reveille for Radicals; p. 199
When Saul Alinsky began building his community-organization movement in 1930s Chicago, observers were watching Alinsky with one eye, while with the other eye observing the building of communist and fascist movements in Europe. It wasn’t hard then to see in Alinsky’s programs at home, elements of the people’s revolution from Russia, as well as some of the same “in your face” tactics being employed by Hitler’s Brownshirts.
What Alinsky’s critics saw was the burgeoning of a national movement, the carefully manipulated construction of people’s organizations, which all had two elements in common: (1) a collectivist creed, which denied the existence of personal responsibility; and (2) an amoral dogma, in which all means were justified by an imaginary utopian end.
While most modern Americans remember well Hitler’s Holocaust and the Cold War waged by a solid U.S.S.R., many of these same Americans have swallowed some false history regarding the movements that spawned such widespread, horrendous results. In what may be regarded as the most triumphant propaganda victory of our time, fascism has been scrubbed of all its Marxist roots, while communism has been scrubbed of its millions of callous murders.
This post-WWII propaganda coup undeniably set the stage for the early Alinsky critics’ most feared eventuality, that the massive organizations could be shrewdly adopted by a fascist demagogue, someone who could “seize leadership and control” and turn them into a “Frankenstein’s monster against democracy.”
But perhaps the most cunning propaganda feat in history has been undertaken for the past 8 years. As Jonah Goldberg expertly expounds in his book, Liberal Fascism, American left-wing ideologues have managed to dissociate themselves from all the horrors of fascism with a “brilliant rhetorical maneuver.” They’ve done it by “claiming that their opponents are the fascists.”
Alinsky himself employed this method, quite deviously. Alinsky biographer, Sanford D. Horwitt provides an anecdote using precisely this diabolical tactic to deceive the people. From Horwitt’s Let Them Call Me Rebel:
“...in the spring of 1972, at Tulane University...students asked Alinsky to help plan a protest of a scheduled speech by George H. W. Bush, then U.S. representative to the United Nations - a speech likely to include a defense of the Nixon administration’s Vietnam War policies. The students told Alinsky they were thinking about picketing or disrupting Bush’s address. That’s the wrong approach, he rejoined, not very creative - and besides causing a disruption might get them thrown out of school. He told them, instead, to go to hear the speech dressed as members of the Ku Klux Klan, and whenever Bush said something in defense of the Vietnam War, they should cheer and wave placards reading, ‘The KKK supports Bush.’ And that is what they did, with very successful, attention-getting results.”
In what may eventually prove to be a devious rhetorical feat of monstrous proportions, while the left has been indulging and fostering the “Bush Is Hitler” meme, they may have just put a genuine ideological fascist heir in the White House.
There is inherent danger in making scurrilous comparisons (as were perpetrated unceasingly against George W. Bush), but there seem to be some very worrisome signs in the rise of Barack Obama that we Americans would be foolish to ignore.
Obama, the Closer
As I put forth last year in “Obama, the Closer”, Barack Obama, did not start his movement; Alinsky did.
Nor did Obama amass the organizations that propelled him. As detailed by Heidi J. Swarts, in her book, Organizing Urban America, the movement begun by Saul Alinsky in the 1930s has morphed into thousands of secular and faith-based leftist political organizations. ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has perhaps the highest public profile, is most reputed for radicalism, and is the organization with which Barack Obama was first aligned. But ACORN is the mere tip of a veritable iceberg of Alinsky-styled community organizations that sweep across the entire United States and make up the backbone of faith-based progressive movements as well.
These euphemistically called “community” organizations have next to nothing to do with improving the communities and everything to do with politics, primarily strong-arming government money to advance their political aims.
Prior to Reagan’s election, these groups worked independently for the most part, each seeking to effect local change towards leftist ends.
But with Reagan’s victory, ACORN founding member Wade Rathke sent out a memo (published by Swarts; Organizing Urban America; p. 29) that would reverberate all the way to Barack Obama’s moment. ACORN had been behaving as a sort of “Lone Ranger of the Left” for too long, wrote Rathke. Ronald Reagan had formed a coalition among the middle-class that threatened to bring greater prosperity without left-wing Statists calling the shots. Rathke put out the call to the ACORN troops to stop antagonizing those who would be allies, especially unions and church organizations, once shunned by ACORN as too placid for the real fight for power. For the next 25 years, the community organization network built, proliferated and formed a solid, nation-wide base of political strength, purely according to Alinsky’s original vision, and all just waiting for the right candidate to tap into it and lead it.
When folks from all corners of America proclaimed, seemingly with one voice, Barack is the “One we’ve been waiting for,” they were speaking out of the vast Alinsky-originated network.
Neither did Barack Obama invent the political “ideology of change,” nor design its carefully crafted propaganda. While media folks talked of the tingles up their legs and the brilliant rhetoric of Barack Obama, they were heralding the speaker only, not the creator of the movement and its slogans. That would have been Saul Alinsky, the man who took fascism and cunningly made it appear to casual observers every bit as American as apple pie.
Barack Obama is merely the movement’s closer, the quintessential liberal fascist with a teleprompter.
Alinsky’s Ideology of Change: The Third Way
Goldberg fastidiously notes the comparison between Alinsky’s “in your face” rules for radicals, studied and perfected by Barack Obama, and shows them to have profoundly fascist roots:
“...there’s no disputing that vast swaths of his (Alinsky’s) writings are indistinguishable from the fascist rhetoric of the 1920s and 1930s...His worldview is distinctly fascistic.
Life is defined by war, contests of power, the imposition of will.
Moreover, Alinsky shares with the fascists and pragmatists of yore a bedrock hostility to dogma. All he believes in are the desired ends of the movement, which he regards as the source of life’s meaning...But what comes through most is his unbridled love of power. Power is a good in its own right for Alinsky. Ours ‘is a world not of angels but of angles,’ he proclaims in Rules for Radicals, ‘where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles.”
Saul Alinsky was the man who transformed politics in America into all-out war mode. Alinsky’s tenth rule of the ethics of means: “You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.” All’s fair in love and war, and politics, to Alinsky, was war.
“A People’s (community) Organization is not a philanthropic plaything or a social service’s ameliorative gesture. It is a deep, hard-driving force, striking and cutting at the very roots of all the evils which beset the people. It thinks and acts in terms of social surgery and not cosmetic cover-ups.
A People’s Organization is dedicated to an eternal war. A war is not an intellectual debate, and in the war against social evils there are no rules of fair play.”
Saul Alinsky; Reveille for Radicals; p. 133
Alinsky includes an entire section in Rules for Radicals on “The Ideology of Change.” The watchword of the Obama campaign was “change.” Just as Hitler mobilized the masses with a calculatingly undefined demand for “change,” so did Alinsky disciple, Barack Obama.
“Everything must be different!” or “Alles muss anders sein!,” Hitler’s own campaign slogan, morphed into “Unite for Change,” and the Obama transition team’s change.gov. Even the idea of a vast “movement” was borrowed from Hitler. As Goldberg states, Hitler used the phrase, “the Movement,” more than 200 times in Mein Kampf.
The word ‘movement’ itself is instructive. Movement, unlike progress, doesn’t imply a fixed destination. Rather, it takes it as a given that any change is better.
(Goldberg; Liberal Fascism; p. 176)
Perhaps the most intoxicating allure to the fascist demagogue and his movement for undefined change is its misleadingly conciliatory flavor. Barack Obama continually, throughout his campaign and even now, portrays himself as the Third Way between the cantankerous factions that have polarized America for the past 80 years, since liberal fascism took root as the Progressive Movement.
Obama claimed that Bush was too much the ideologue, that his policies were driven by the Christian right, involved “false choices” between all-out war on the one hand and diplomacy on the other, between the welfare state and cold-hearted, do-nothing conservatism, between absolute sovereignty and cowardly submission to the global community, between doing all and doing nothing. And if any of this gibberish were a true reflection of our political disagreements, Obama would be somewhat correct. But as any sentient person knows, this radical presentation of Obama’s is absolutely false. That gets lost, though, in the leader’s conciliatory tone.
What must not get lost, however, is the very real fact that this Third Way movement for change is as fascist as anything we have ever seen in the USA. As Alinsky described his own “Ideology of Change,” the lure is in the claim that the leader has no ideology that would confine his outlook to hard choices between what is moral or immoral, that there are no boundaries set by either religion or politics, that everything can change and the only thing that matters is one’s end intention to do something good.
As Hitler, before Alinsky, proclaimed, “Our program is to govern,” not delve into theory and dogma. This is in itself very appealing, especially to an electorate sick of the contentiousness of the past decade. This undefined “ideology of change” for the sake of change, for some action that will break through the roadblocks of polarization, has tremendous allure.
But Goldberg bursts that bubble:
The ‘middle way’ sounds moderate and un-radical. Its appeal is that it sounds unideological and freethinking. But philosophically the Third Way is not mere difference splitting; it is utopian and authoritarian. Its utopian aspect becomes manifest in its antagonism to the idea that politics is about trade-offs. The Third Wayer says that there are no false choices -‘I refuse to accept that X should come at the expense of Y.’ The Third Way holds that we can have capitalism and socialism, individual liberty and absolute unity. Fascist movements are implicitly utopian because they - like communist and heretical Christian movements — assume that with just the right arrangement of policies, all contradictions can be rectified.
(Goldberg; Liberal Fascism; p. 130)
Of course, thinking people — when they are indeed thinking — know this is an utterly false promise. Life will never be made perfect because all human beings are imperfect.
Unity, the Diabolical Lure
What of this longed-for unity then? Barack Obama proclaimed he was leading a movement of people “united for change.” What is the appeal of unity?
The modern liberal fascist seeks that state between mother and child which exists early on before the child seeks his own independence, before mother must set herself at odds with him. It is the perfectly secure state of childhood where all is lovely and peaceful and nurturing, but cannot continue indefinitely if the child is to be prepared to face a world of difficulty and hard choices. Nevertheless, the yearning continues. It is this primordial yearning which sets itself in the crosshairs of the fascist demagogue.
But in adult life, this type of unity is anything but desirable, anything but virtuous. As Goldberg states, however, “elevation of unity as the highest social value is a core tenet of fascism and all leftist ideologies.”
The allure of this mystical unity is so great that its demand to sacrifice reason and thought on the false altar of infantile security is seemingly lost to many. But as Goldberg also reminds us, “unity is, at best, morally neutral and often a source of irrationality and groupthink.”
Rampaging mobs are unified. The Mafia is unified. Marauding barbarians bent on rape and pillage are unified. Meanwhile, civilized people have disagreements, and small-d democrats have arguments. Classical liberalism is based on this fundamental insight, which is why fascism was always anti-liberal.
Liberalism rejected the idea that unity is more valuable than individuality. For fascists and other leftists, meaning and authenticity are found in collective enterprises - of class, nation, or race - and the state is there to enforce that meaning on everyone without the hindrance of debate.
(Goldberg; Liberal Fascism; p. 172)
Just as the healthy relationship between parent and developing child demands friction, so does the healthy relationship between truly liberal citizens. Unity is the siren song of tyranny, not the call to genuine progress.
Fascism: The Two Birds with One Stone Approach
I think of Obama’s liberal fascism as a cancer that attempts to kill the two birds of American exceptionalism with one stone. It is a deviously appealing Third Way that in the end, if allowed to triumph completely, kills both individual liberty and Judeo/Christian religion with its single stone.
And, indeed this was the precise goal of Adolph Hitler. Unlike the outspoken hatred of private property and religion espoused by communists under Lenin and Stalin, Hitler preferred the more moderate-seeming incremental takeover of private enterprise in the interest of the “common good,” and the slow-death of Judeo/Christian religion by chipping away at it and replacing the people’s dependence upon God gradually with reliance on the state (Hitler).
[Note: Hitler’s Holocaust was based on the Progressive Eugenics principles set forth by Social Darwinist scientists and social engineers of the 1920s, widely accepted both in Europe and in the United States. Religion was not at the core of the Holocaust; race was. However, Hitler’s other chief aim was to destroy the Judeo/Christian religions, which he believed had ruined the Germanic race’s world predominance.]
Of course, as the German people were duped into giving Hitler totalitarian powers to work his magic “change,” he took off the kid gloves and accelerated the program.
In the end, however slow the process, however seemingly benign the growth of the state may seem, liberal fascism has the same result of all tyrannies before it: hell on earth for most and a self-indulgent feast for the Statists in power.
As Barack Obama speaks, thinking Americans ought to hear the echoes of past fascist demagogues and remember. Remember.
When Barack Obama promises “collective redemption” through his profligate spending programs and vast overtures to a new world order built on love for our fellow man, we ought to shudder not swoon.
We ought to remember that healthy global relationships are built upon respect, not all-encompassing love, and that redemption for one’s soul is a commodity the state is not empowered to offer.
As Pope Benedict XVI has so presciently warned:
Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic.
Be not fooled, America. The movement, which appears most benign is instead the most malignant growth ever seen on our soil. It’s a cancer that will kill, and however slowly it grows or however nice it may look on the surface, doesn’t change a thing.
Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at kyleanneshiver@gmail.com .
Saturday, January 29, 2011
NO EARMARKS = POWER GRAB!
Ban on “Earmarks” Called “Power Grab”
A Semi-News/Semi-Satire from AzConservative ^ | 29 Jan 2011 | John Semmens
President Barack Obama’s pledge to veto legislation containing so-called “earmarks” has so rankled Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) that he has vowed “to fight to my last breath against this power grab.”
“The President isn’t the only one who gets to say who will be on the receiving end of government spending,” Reid said. “All of us who must face the voters need campaign donations if we’re to be reelected. Channeling federal dollars to the businesses and interest groups who fill our campaign coffers is the payback that’s expected from these donors.
Without it their incentive to give will dry up.”
Reid said he wasn’t entirely unsympathetic to “the President’s desire to focus the gratitude of potential donors on his own bid for reelection in 2012. I mean, raising a billion dollar campaign fund is a huge task. But trying to hog it all for himself overlooks the fact that he needs Congress’ support to govern.
He’s not going to get that support from a body comprised of legislators who are forced to run on their merits alone.”
“Without the quid pro quo of earmarks we’ll likely end up with a Congress controlled by Tea Party fanatics,” Reid warned. “Which, I would think is about the last thing we all want to have happen.”
Alan note: Speak for yourself Harry! Many wouldn't mind at all.
A Semi-News/Semi-Satire from AzConservative ^ | 29 Jan 2011 | John Semmens
President Barack Obama’s pledge to veto legislation containing so-called “earmarks” has so rankled Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) that he has vowed “to fight to my last breath against this power grab.”
“The President isn’t the only one who gets to say who will be on the receiving end of government spending,” Reid said. “All of us who must face the voters need campaign donations if we’re to be reelected. Channeling federal dollars to the businesses and interest groups who fill our campaign coffers is the payback that’s expected from these donors.
Without it their incentive to give will dry up.”
Reid said he wasn’t entirely unsympathetic to “the President’s desire to focus the gratitude of potential donors on his own bid for reelection in 2012. I mean, raising a billion dollar campaign fund is a huge task. But trying to hog it all for himself overlooks the fact that he needs Congress’ support to govern.
He’s not going to get that support from a body comprised of legislators who are forced to run on their merits alone.”
“Without the quid pro quo of earmarks we’ll likely end up with a Congress controlled by Tea Party fanatics,” Reid warned. “Which, I would think is about the last thing we all want to have happen.”
Alan note: Speak for yourself Harry! Many wouldn't mind at all.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
OBAMA 5-YEAR SPENDING FREEZE IS DEFICIT PRESERVATION!
Fox News ^ | January 26, 2011
President Obama's pledge to freeze some federal spending for five years was met with yawns Wednesday from a slew of fiscally minded Republicans who say that if the president is serious about tackling the national debt, he'll have to do a lot better than that.
Congressional Republicans want to see deep cuts in the budget, as demonstrated by a GOP proposal last week to slash $2.5 trillion over the next decade and a proposal Tuesday from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to cut $500 billion in one year.
Their calls to dismantle entire agencies and departments might not get much bipartisan support. But by comparison, the president's call to freeze domestic spending for five years, yielding a projected savings of $400 billion over a decade, looked too tame to many lawmakers.
"We're continuing to spend at a deficit level, so if we do that for the next five years, we'll continue to add to our debt," Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., told Fox News. "The reality of his speech last night is very difficult to imagine."
President Obama's pledge to freeze some federal spending for five years was met with yawns Wednesday from a slew of fiscally minded Republicans who say that if the president is serious about tackling the national debt, he'll have to do a lot better than that.
Congressional Republicans want to see deep cuts in the budget, as demonstrated by a GOP proposal last week to slash $2.5 trillion over the next decade and a proposal Tuesday from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to cut $500 billion in one year.
Their calls to dismantle entire agencies and departments might not get much bipartisan support. But by comparison, the president's call to freeze domestic spending for five years, yielding a projected savings of $400 billion over a decade, looked too tame to many lawmakers.
"We're continuing to spend at a deficit level, so if we do that for the next five years, we'll continue to add to our debt," Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., told Fox News. "The reality of his speech last night is very difficult to imagine."
Friday, January 14, 2011
DRIVE SAFELY AND OBEY THE RULES
Having noticed a huge increase in the police presence in the streets and lots of traffic stops - including of pedestrians, it i interesting to note the cost of fines.
California needs money, so pay close attention to the rules of the road!
HUGE California Traffic Tickets Fines
California State
Effective 01/06/2011
Please be extremely careful in your driving and car registration/ insurance matters. State of California is broke and they are trying hard to squeeze all of us hard to collect money.
Effective immediately, if you do not stop at the red light, be ready to pay $436 in fines or if you pass a school bus with flashing red signals, you will be charged $616. The state of California is going for blood, so be extra careful in driving, You cannot afford messing with them. I have been hearing that Highway Patrols are under pressure to issue a lot more tickets than last year with at least 30% increase in fines over 2009, so beware of radar guns, highway and traffic cameras installed everywhere and the tougher enforcement of parking rules.
Just for your info, the next time you park in the handicapped zone, even for a minute, you will be looking at almost $ 1000 in parking tickets , so it'd better be worth it.
California needs money, so pay close attention to the rules of the road!
Traffic Ticket Fines (Effective 01/06/2011)
VC 12814.6 $214 Failure to obey license provisions.
VC 14600(A) $214 Failure to notify DMV of address change within 10 days
Note: The fine may be reduced with valid proof of correction.
VC 16028(A) $796 Failure to provide evidence of financial responsibility (insurance)
Note: This fine may be reduced with proof of insurance on or after the violation date.
VC 21453(A) $436 Failure to stop at a red signal.
VC 22349 $214 Unsafe speed, 1 to 15 miles over the limit.
VC 22350 $328 Unsafe speed, 16 to 25 miles over the limit.
VC 22450 $214 Failure to stop at a stop sign.
VC 22454(A) $616 Passing a school bus with flashing red signals.
VC 23123(A) $148 Driving while using a wireless phone not hands free, first offense .
I know someone who got this and it ending up being $274
VC 23123(B) $256 Driving while using a wireless phone not hands free, each subsequent offense.
VC 23123.5 $148 Driving while using a wireless device to send, read or write text.
VC 23124 $148 Minor driving while using a wireless phone.
VC 22500 $976 Parking in a bus loading area.
VC 22507(A) $976 Violation of disabled parking provisions, first offense.
VC 22507(B) $1876 Violation of disabled parking provisions, second offense.
VC 26708 $178 Unlawful material on vehicle windows.
VC 27150 $178 Adequate muffler required.
VC 27315 $148 Mandatory use of seat belts.
VC 27360 $436 Mandatory use of passenger child restraints.
Note: This fine may be reduced by completing a court authorized child seat diversion program .
VC 27400 $178 Headsets or Earplugs covering both ears.
VC 27803 $178 Violation of motorcycle safety helmet requirements.
VC 34506 $616 Commercial Driver - Log book violation.
VC 4000 $256 No evidence of current registration.
Note: The fine may be reduced with valid proof of correction.
VC 4159 $178 Notify DMV of change of address within 10 days.
Note: The fine may be reduced with valid proof of correction.
VC 5200 $178 Proper display of license plates.
Note: The fine may be reduced with valid proof of correction.
.
VC 9400 $178 Commercial weight fees due.
Note: The fine may be reduced with valid proof of correction
Look out for the money grabbers in Sacramento but don‘t always blame the cops. They don’t set the fines or collect them BUT they can use "selective/biased" judgment - not usually in your favor - in writing the tickets! There are a few bad apples among the otherwise dedicated forces and the most prominent "hardliners" are the motorcycle ones. Their total reason for being is traffic, so there is no offset in their duty mindsets and what denotes doing their job well.
One very common habit is to write up speed ticket swith a speed of more than 15 miles over the posted limit - for instance claiming the radar gun showed a speed of 51 repeat 51 miles in a 35 mile zone to hike the fine amount.
VC 22349 $214 Unsafe speed, 1 to 15 miles over the limit.
VC 22350 $328 Unsafe speed, 16 to 25 miles over the limit.
They have no obligation to show you any proof of the speed registered on their radar or similar instrument at the stop so it is what they say it is. If urged to meet a "quota" or a minimum number of stops during their shift by their city or superiors, they often behave as we fallible humans do.
A survey of speeding traffic tickets issued across California would probably amaze the researcher as to how high this "over 15" percentage proves to be! And the huge difference in revenue this engenders. (With less work for the pressured officers, who after all are human beings not saints).
California needs money, so pay close attention to the rules of the road!
HUGE California Traffic Tickets Fines
California State
Effective 01/06/2011
Please be extremely careful in your driving and car registration/ insurance matters. State of California is broke and they are trying hard to squeeze all of us hard to collect money.
Effective immediately, if you do not stop at the red light, be ready to pay $436 in fines or if you pass a school bus with flashing red signals, you will be charged $616. The state of California is going for blood, so be extra careful in driving, You cannot afford messing with them. I have been hearing that Highway Patrols are under pressure to issue a lot more tickets than last year with at least 30% increase in fines over 2009, so beware of radar guns, highway and traffic cameras installed everywhere and the tougher enforcement of parking rules.
Just for your info, the next time you park in the handicapped zone, even for a minute, you will be looking at almost $ 1000 in parking tickets , so it'd better be worth it.
California needs money, so pay close attention to the rules of the road!
Traffic Ticket Fines (Effective 01/06/2011)
VC 12814.6 $214 Failure to obey license provisions.
VC 14600(A) $214 Failure to notify DMV of address change within 10 days
Note: The fine may be reduced with valid proof of correction.
VC 16028(A) $796 Failure to provide evidence of financial responsibility (insurance)
Note: This fine may be reduced with proof of insurance on or after the violation date.
VC 21453(A) $436 Failure to stop at a red signal.
VC 22349 $214 Unsafe speed, 1 to 15 miles over the limit.
VC 22350 $328 Unsafe speed, 16 to 25 miles over the limit.
VC 22450 $214 Failure to stop at a stop sign.
VC 22454(A) $616 Passing a school bus with flashing red signals.
VC 23123(A) $148 Driving while using a wireless phone not hands free, first offense .
I know someone who got this and it ending up being $274
VC 23123(B) $256 Driving while using a wireless phone not hands free, each subsequent offense.
VC 23123.5 $148 Driving while using a wireless device to send, read or write text.
VC 23124 $148 Minor driving while using a wireless phone.
VC 22500 $976 Parking in a bus loading area.
VC 22507(A) $976 Violation of disabled parking provisions, first offense.
VC 22507(B) $1876 Violation of disabled parking provisions, second offense.
VC 26708 $178 Unlawful material on vehicle windows.
VC 27150 $178 Adequate muffler required.
VC 27315 $148 Mandatory use of seat belts.
VC 27360 $436 Mandatory use of passenger child restraints.
Note: This fine may be reduced by completing a court authorized child seat diversion program .
VC 27400 $178 Headsets or Earplugs covering both ears.
VC 27803 $178 Violation of motorcycle safety helmet requirements.
VC 34506 $616 Commercial Driver - Log book violation.
VC 4000 $256 No evidence of current registration.
Note: The fine may be reduced with valid proof of correction.
VC 4159 $178 Notify DMV of change of address within 10 days.
Note: The fine may be reduced with valid proof of correction.
VC 5200 $178 Proper display of license plates.
Note: The fine may be reduced with valid proof of correction.
.
VC 9400 $178 Commercial weight fees due.
Note: The fine may be reduced with valid proof of correction
Look out for the money grabbers in Sacramento but don‘t always blame the cops. They don’t set the fines or collect them BUT they can use "selective/biased" judgment - not usually in your favor - in writing the tickets! There are a few bad apples among the otherwise dedicated forces and the most prominent "hardliners" are the motorcycle ones. Their total reason for being is traffic, so there is no offset in their duty mindsets and what denotes doing their job well.
One very common habit is to write up speed ticket swith a speed of more than 15 miles over the posted limit - for instance claiming the radar gun showed a speed of 51 repeat 51 miles in a 35 mile zone to hike the fine amount.
VC 22349 $214 Unsafe speed, 1 to 15 miles over the limit.
VC 22350 $328 Unsafe speed, 16 to 25 miles over the limit.
They have no obligation to show you any proof of the speed registered on their radar or similar instrument at the stop so it is what they say it is. If urged to meet a "quota" or a minimum number of stops during their shift by their city or superiors, they often behave as we fallible humans do.
A survey of speeding traffic tickets issued across California would probably amaze the researcher as to how high this "over 15" percentage proves to be! And the huge difference in revenue this engenders. (With less work for the pressured officers, who after all are human beings not saints).
Monday, December 20, 2010
OBAMA AGAIN ON ANNUAL MOST CORRUPT LIST
OBAMA WATCH CENTRAL
Encore! Obama repeats appearance on 'most corrupt' list
Joined by Boxer, Emanuel, Ensign, Pelosi, Rangel, Waters
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Bob Unruh
Barack Obama has been encored on the "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2010, a list published annually by the a Washington-based organization that focuses on transparency, accountability and integrity in the government, politics and law of the United States.
"Remember the promise President Obama made just after his inauguration in 2009? 'Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,'" said Judicial Watch in today's announcement.
"Instead, Americans have suffered through lies, stonewalling, cover-ups, corruption, secrecy, scandal and blatant disregard for the rule of law … this has been the Obama legacy in its first two years."
The full list, in alphabetical order, names:
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.;
Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel;
Sen. John Ensign, R-N.V.;
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.;
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill.;
Barack Obama,
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.;
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.;
Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky.; and
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
About Obama, the report said he was "caught in a lie" over what he knew about Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's "scheme to sell the president's vacated Senate seate."
The report explained, "Blagojevich's former Chief of Staff John Harris testified that Obama had personal knowledge of Blago's plot to obtain a presidential cabinet position in exchange for appointing a candidate handpicked by the president. In fact, according to Harris's court testimony, Obama sent Blagojevich a list of 'acceptable' Senate candidates to fill his old seat. Obama was interviewed by the FBI even before he was sworn into office. He claimed he and his staff had no contact with Blagojevich's office."
The White House did not respond to a WND request for comment.
According to Judicial Watch, "Unfortunately federal prosecutors never called the president or his staff to testify under oath."
Further, Obama broke "his famous pledge to televise health-care negotiations."
"In 2010, we learned why he broke his pledge. In what is now known as the 'Cornhusker Kickback' scheme, Obama and the Democrats in the Senate 'purchased' the vote of one of the last Democrat hold-outs, Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, who opposed Obamacare over the issue of covering abortions with taxpayer funds," the report said.
"Nelson abandoned his opposition to Obamacare after receiving millions of dollars in federal aid for his home state, helping to give the Democrats the 60 votes they needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. Same goes for Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, who received a $100 million payoff in what has been called 'The Louisiana Purchase.' (The Kickback was so corrupt that Democrats stripped it out at the last minute. The Louisiana Purchase, on the other hand, became law of the land.)" the report said.
"Obama lied about his White House's involvement in this legislative bribery that helped lead to the passage of the signature policy achievement of his presidency," the report said.
Founded in 1994, Judicial Watch describes itself as a constitutionally conservative, nonpartisan education foundation that promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law."
The other celebrities "honored" on the list:
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. – who, it appears, "still needs an ethics lesson," the report said. She's chair of the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, and presided over a year-long investigation into the "preferential treatment" Sens. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Kent Conrad, D-N.D., may have gotten from Countrywide Financial. Senate rules prohibit members from getting loan terms not available to the general public, Judicial Watch said.
"The evidence clearly showed that Dodd and Conrad knew they were receiving preferential treatment despite repeated denials. Yet Boxer's Senate Ethics Committee allowed Dodd and Conrad to wriggle off the hook with a light admonition that suggested the two senators should have exercised better judgment.
But that's not all, the report said. "Boxer failed to mention (or disclose on her official Senate Financial Disclosure documents) that she and her husband have signed no less than seven mortgages with Countrywide! At the time of the hearing, Boxer reportedly indicated she had paid off two Countrywide mortgages, but did not mention the others.
Former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel – who "didn't earn the nickname 'Rahmbo' for being a mild-mannered shrinking violet," Judicial Watch said. Among his issues cited: He served as Bill Clinton's chief money-man when the Clinton campaign was "corrupted by foreign money." He was a "ruthless political combatant" in defending Clinton in the Lewinsky scandal. He allegedly interfered with Senate elections in Pennsylvania and Colorado by offering federal appointments to Rep. Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff and participated "in the Blagojevich scandal."
"According to sworn testimony during the 'Blago' trial, Emanuel served as Obama's chief negotiator with the Blagojevich team as the former Illinois governor attempted to illegally sell Obama's former Senate seat to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, the federal prosecutor cut short the case against Blagojevich and Emanuel and other Obama insiders were never called to testify," Judicial Watch reported.
And, regarding the elections, "Sestak and Romanoff were not Obama's favored candidates, so Emanuel and Messina apparently attempted to unlawfully persuade them to abandon their campaigns.
"Emanuel left the White House under an ethical cloud and has decided to throw his hat in the ring for mayor of Chicago, where he again stands accused of ignoring the rules and violating the law regarding candidate residency requirements," the report said.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. – publicly admitted an affair with the wife of a staff member, and evidence "indicates" he tried to cover up his shenanigans "by bribing the couple with lucrative gifts and political favors," Judicial Watch said.
The New York Times said, JW reported, that, "Payments of $96,000 to the Hamptons also were made by Sen. Ensign's parents, who insist this was a gift, not hush money. Once a lobbying job was secured, Senator Ensign and his chief of staff continued to help [Doug] Hampton, advocating his clients' cases directly with federal agencies."
But Judicial Watch reported not only did the lobbying apparently violate Senate rules, the "$96,000 in 'gifts' provided to the Hamptons were clearly hush payments."
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. – Where to start? He allegedly "intervened" for Rep. Waters on behalf of his home-state OneUnited Bank to get Troubled Asset Relief Program money, and "to this day, Barney Frnak continues to defend his role in the meltdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying he was just as blindsided as the rest of America when the two government sponsored enterprises collapsed, triggering the financial crisis."
But the report said The Boston Globe documented that Frank should have known.
"Frank wasn't wrong," said Judicial Watch. "He was just lying through his teeth. Frank claims that he 'missed' the warning signs with Fannie and Freddie because he was wearing 'ideological blinders,' which was just his lame attempt to blame Republicans. But he did not miss them. According to evidence uncovered by Judicial Watch, he just chose to ignore them," the report said.
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill. – was described by the Chicago Sun-Times as directing "a major political fundraiser to offer former Gov. Rod Blagojevich millions of dollars in campaign cash in return for an appointment to the U.S. Senate." Judicial Watch said while "Blago" was convicted on one of 24 charges related to the scheme, it is Jackson "who should be on the hot-seat."
"According to Jackson's fundraiser, Raghuveer Nayak, the Illinois congressman asked him to offer not $1.5 million, but a whopping $6 million in campaign cash to Blagojevich to secure the Senate seat!" Judicial Watch said. "In addition to his corrupt deal-making, in 2010 Jackson was also nailed for conducting an improper and potentially criminal relationship with a female 'social acquaintance.'"
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. – Judicial Watch said "Air Pelosi" now is grounded.
"Judicial Watch uncovered documents back in 2009 detailing attempts by Pentagon staff to accommodate Pelosi's numerous requests for military escorts and military aircraft for herself and her family as well as the speaker's 11th-hour cancellations and changes. In 2010, Judicial Watch kept the pressure on Pelosi, uncovering documents that demonstrated the speaker was using U.S. Air Force aircraft as her own personal party planes. Overall, the speaker's military travel cost the United States Air Force $2,100,744.59 over a two-year period — $101,429.14 of which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol," the report said.
Among the purchases were Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey's Irish Cream, Maker's Mark whisky, Courvoisier cognac, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewar's scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey, Corona beer and several bottles of wine.
"Moreover, Pelosi also abused the rules by allowing members of her family to join her on taxpayer-funded Air Force flights. For example, on June 20, 2009, Speaker Pelosi's daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons joined a flight from Andrews Air Force Base to San Francisco International Airport. That flight included $143 for on-flight expenses for food and other items. On July 2, 2010, Pelosi took her grandson on a flight from Andrews Air Force Base to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, which is northeast of San Francisco," the report said.
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., – Earlier this month the U.S. House voted 333-79 to "censure" Rangel, which, the report said, is next to expulsion as the most serious sanction that can be taken. Judicial Watch said Rangel's ethics violations included forgetting to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income, misusing his congressional office to raise money for his private center, misusing his residentially zoned Harlem apartment as a campaign headquarters and failing to report $600,000 in income.
"It is worth noting that the [House] committee did not consider other serious corruption charges against Rangel. For example, it has been alleged that Rangel preserved a tax loophole for an oil company in exchange for a Rangel Center donation. The committee also did not consider the charge that Rangel used improper influence to maintain ownership of his highly coveted rent-controlled apartment – the same apartment he improperly used for campaign activities," Judicial Watch said.
"As this is Washington, politicians of both parties will pretend that censure is a serious punishment. But it is a 'punishment' that simply requires Rangel to come to the well of the House and hear a disapproving statement read by lame-duck House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the real world, you get fired or thrown in jail for abusing your office and not paying your taxes," the report said.
Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky. – Judicial Watch said Rogers, even though the 2010 election focused on cutting government spending, was named chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and according to ABC, "In two years, Rogers pushed through 135 earmarks worth $246 million. He's brought tens of millions of dollars into his hometown of Somerset, Ky., so much so that the town has been dubbed 'Mr. Rogers' neighborhood.'" Judicial Watch said those earmarks included $17 million for an airport that is so disused the last commercial airline pulled out in February [2010].
Other expenditures he sought included $5 million for a Namibia-based group that employs his daughter.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. – The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (known informally as the House Ethics Committee) plans to hold hearings on Waters, according to the AP, on allegations "Waters broke the rules in requesting federal help for a bank where her husband owned stock and had served on the board of directors."
Judicial Watch has investigated the Waters/OneUnited Bank scandal for months. In fact, JW successfully sued the Obama Treasury Department to get documents and obtained explosive e-mails from the Treasury that provide documented evidence to support the charges against Waters.
It also reported a lobbyist reportedly paid Waters' husband $15,000 in consulting fees at the time she was co-sponsoring legislation that would help save a client.
Judicial reported among those listed on the "most wanted" list in earlier years was former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, later sentenced to nearly six years in prison for a fraudulent casino deal.
Another individual previously cited was former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who recently was convicted of funneling corporate money to Texas candidates. He's planning an appeal.
A third is Dodd, who announced he would not run for re-election and as of January, will be out of office.
The 2009 list included Dodd, Obama, Frank, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Attorney General Eric Holder, Pelosi, Rep. John Murtha, Ensign, Jackson and Rangel.
Encore! Obama repeats appearance on 'most corrupt' list
Joined by Boxer, Emanuel, Ensign, Pelosi, Rangel, Waters
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Bob Unruh
Barack Obama has been encored on the "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2010, a list published annually by the a Washington-based organization that focuses on transparency, accountability and integrity in the government, politics and law of the United States.
"Remember the promise President Obama made just after his inauguration in 2009? 'Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,'" said Judicial Watch in today's announcement.
"Instead, Americans have suffered through lies, stonewalling, cover-ups, corruption, secrecy, scandal and blatant disregard for the rule of law … this has been the Obama legacy in its first two years."
The full list, in alphabetical order, names:
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.;
Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel;
Sen. John Ensign, R-N.V.;
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.;
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill.;
Barack Obama,
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.;
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.;
Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky.; and
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
About Obama, the report said he was "caught in a lie" over what he knew about Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's "scheme to sell the president's vacated Senate seate."
The report explained, "Blagojevich's former Chief of Staff John Harris testified that Obama had personal knowledge of Blago's plot to obtain a presidential cabinet position in exchange for appointing a candidate handpicked by the president. In fact, according to Harris's court testimony, Obama sent Blagojevich a list of 'acceptable' Senate candidates to fill his old seat. Obama was interviewed by the FBI even before he was sworn into office. He claimed he and his staff had no contact with Blagojevich's office."
The White House did not respond to a WND request for comment.
According to Judicial Watch, "Unfortunately federal prosecutors never called the president or his staff to testify under oath."
Further, Obama broke "his famous pledge to televise health-care negotiations."
"In 2010, we learned why he broke his pledge. In what is now known as the 'Cornhusker Kickback' scheme, Obama and the Democrats in the Senate 'purchased' the vote of one of the last Democrat hold-outs, Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, who opposed Obamacare over the issue of covering abortions with taxpayer funds," the report said.
"Nelson abandoned his opposition to Obamacare after receiving millions of dollars in federal aid for his home state, helping to give the Democrats the 60 votes they needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. Same goes for Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, who received a $100 million payoff in what has been called 'The Louisiana Purchase.' (The Kickback was so corrupt that Democrats stripped it out at the last minute. The Louisiana Purchase, on the other hand, became law of the land.)" the report said.
"Obama lied about his White House's involvement in this legislative bribery that helped lead to the passage of the signature policy achievement of his presidency," the report said.
Founded in 1994, Judicial Watch describes itself as a constitutionally conservative, nonpartisan education foundation that promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law."
The other celebrities "honored" on the list:
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. – who, it appears, "still needs an ethics lesson," the report said. She's chair of the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, and presided over a year-long investigation into the "preferential treatment" Sens. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Kent Conrad, D-N.D., may have gotten from Countrywide Financial. Senate rules prohibit members from getting loan terms not available to the general public, Judicial Watch said.
"The evidence clearly showed that Dodd and Conrad knew they were receiving preferential treatment despite repeated denials. Yet Boxer's Senate Ethics Committee allowed Dodd and Conrad to wriggle off the hook with a light admonition that suggested the two senators should have exercised better judgment.
But that's not all, the report said. "Boxer failed to mention (or disclose on her official Senate Financial Disclosure documents) that she and her husband have signed no less than seven mortgages with Countrywide! At the time of the hearing, Boxer reportedly indicated she had paid off two Countrywide mortgages, but did not mention the others.
Former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel – who "didn't earn the nickname 'Rahmbo' for being a mild-mannered shrinking violet," Judicial Watch said. Among his issues cited: He served as Bill Clinton's chief money-man when the Clinton campaign was "corrupted by foreign money." He was a "ruthless political combatant" in defending Clinton in the Lewinsky scandal. He allegedly interfered with Senate elections in Pennsylvania and Colorado by offering federal appointments to Rep. Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff and participated "in the Blagojevich scandal."
"According to sworn testimony during the 'Blago' trial, Emanuel served as Obama's chief negotiator with the Blagojevich team as the former Illinois governor attempted to illegally sell Obama's former Senate seat to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, the federal prosecutor cut short the case against Blagojevich and Emanuel and other Obama insiders were never called to testify," Judicial Watch reported.
And, regarding the elections, "Sestak and Romanoff were not Obama's favored candidates, so Emanuel and Messina apparently attempted to unlawfully persuade them to abandon their campaigns.
"Emanuel left the White House under an ethical cloud and has decided to throw his hat in the ring for mayor of Chicago, where he again stands accused of ignoring the rules and violating the law regarding candidate residency requirements," the report said.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. – publicly admitted an affair with the wife of a staff member, and evidence "indicates" he tried to cover up his shenanigans "by bribing the couple with lucrative gifts and political favors," Judicial Watch said.
The New York Times said, JW reported, that, "Payments of $96,000 to the Hamptons also were made by Sen. Ensign's parents, who insist this was a gift, not hush money. Once a lobbying job was secured, Senator Ensign and his chief of staff continued to help [Doug] Hampton, advocating his clients' cases directly with federal agencies."
But Judicial Watch reported not only did the lobbying apparently violate Senate rules, the "$96,000 in 'gifts' provided to the Hamptons were clearly hush payments."
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. – Where to start? He allegedly "intervened" for Rep. Waters on behalf of his home-state OneUnited Bank to get Troubled Asset Relief Program money, and "to this day, Barney Frnak continues to defend his role in the meltdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying he was just as blindsided as the rest of America when the two government sponsored enterprises collapsed, triggering the financial crisis."
But the report said The Boston Globe documented that Frank should have known.
"Frank wasn't wrong," said Judicial Watch. "He was just lying through his teeth. Frank claims that he 'missed' the warning signs with Fannie and Freddie because he was wearing 'ideological blinders,' which was just his lame attempt to blame Republicans. But he did not miss them. According to evidence uncovered by Judicial Watch, he just chose to ignore them," the report said.
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill. – was described by the Chicago Sun-Times as directing "a major political fundraiser to offer former Gov. Rod Blagojevich millions of dollars in campaign cash in return for an appointment to the U.S. Senate." Judicial Watch said while "Blago" was convicted on one of 24 charges related to the scheme, it is Jackson "who should be on the hot-seat."
"According to Jackson's fundraiser, Raghuveer Nayak, the Illinois congressman asked him to offer not $1.5 million, but a whopping $6 million in campaign cash to Blagojevich to secure the Senate seat!" Judicial Watch said. "In addition to his corrupt deal-making, in 2010 Jackson was also nailed for conducting an improper and potentially criminal relationship with a female 'social acquaintance.'"
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. – Judicial Watch said "Air Pelosi" now is grounded.
"Judicial Watch uncovered documents back in 2009 detailing attempts by Pentagon staff to accommodate Pelosi's numerous requests for military escorts and military aircraft for herself and her family as well as the speaker's 11th-hour cancellations and changes. In 2010, Judicial Watch kept the pressure on Pelosi, uncovering documents that demonstrated the speaker was using U.S. Air Force aircraft as her own personal party planes. Overall, the speaker's military travel cost the United States Air Force $2,100,744.59 over a two-year period — $101,429.14 of which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol," the report said.
Among the purchases were Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey's Irish Cream, Maker's Mark whisky, Courvoisier cognac, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewar's scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey, Corona beer and several bottles of wine.
"Moreover, Pelosi also abused the rules by allowing members of her family to join her on taxpayer-funded Air Force flights. For example, on June 20, 2009, Speaker Pelosi's daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons joined a flight from Andrews Air Force Base to San Francisco International Airport. That flight included $143 for on-flight expenses for food and other items. On July 2, 2010, Pelosi took her grandson on a flight from Andrews Air Force Base to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, which is northeast of San Francisco," the report said.
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., – Earlier this month the U.S. House voted 333-79 to "censure" Rangel, which, the report said, is next to expulsion as the most serious sanction that can be taken. Judicial Watch said Rangel's ethics violations included forgetting to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income, misusing his congressional office to raise money for his private center, misusing his residentially zoned Harlem apartment as a campaign headquarters and failing to report $600,000 in income.
"It is worth noting that the [House] committee did not consider other serious corruption charges against Rangel. For example, it has been alleged that Rangel preserved a tax loophole for an oil company in exchange for a Rangel Center donation. The committee also did not consider the charge that Rangel used improper influence to maintain ownership of his highly coveted rent-controlled apartment – the same apartment he improperly used for campaign activities," Judicial Watch said.
"As this is Washington, politicians of both parties will pretend that censure is a serious punishment. But it is a 'punishment' that simply requires Rangel to come to the well of the House and hear a disapproving statement read by lame-duck House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the real world, you get fired or thrown in jail for abusing your office and not paying your taxes," the report said.
Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky. – Judicial Watch said Rogers, even though the 2010 election focused on cutting government spending, was named chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and according to ABC, "In two years, Rogers pushed through 135 earmarks worth $246 million. He's brought tens of millions of dollars into his hometown of Somerset, Ky., so much so that the town has been dubbed 'Mr. Rogers' neighborhood.'" Judicial Watch said those earmarks included $17 million for an airport that is so disused the last commercial airline pulled out in February [2010].
Other expenditures he sought included $5 million for a Namibia-based group that employs his daughter.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. – The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (known informally as the House Ethics Committee) plans to hold hearings on Waters, according to the AP, on allegations "Waters broke the rules in requesting federal help for a bank where her husband owned stock and had served on the board of directors."
Judicial Watch has investigated the Waters/OneUnited Bank scandal for months. In fact, JW successfully sued the Obama Treasury Department to get documents and obtained explosive e-mails from the Treasury that provide documented evidence to support the charges against Waters.
It also reported a lobbyist reportedly paid Waters' husband $15,000 in consulting fees at the time she was co-sponsoring legislation that would help save a client.
Judicial reported among those listed on the "most wanted" list in earlier years was former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, later sentenced to nearly six years in prison for a fraudulent casino deal.
Another individual previously cited was former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who recently was convicted of funneling corporate money to Texas candidates. He's planning an appeal.
A third is Dodd, who announced he would not run for re-election and as of January, will be out of office.
The 2009 list included Dodd, Obama, Frank, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Attorney General Eric Holder, Pelosi, Rep. John Murtha, Ensign, Jackson and Rangel.
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