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Why Doesn’t Obama Ban Iranian Press TV? by Kenneth R. Timmerman
The Case of CH2M HILL: $2 Billion in Crony Stimulation by Rusty Weiss
The Truth about George Soros by AIM Staff
Lifting the Veil on WikiLeaks by AIM Staff
The Truth about Al-Jazeera English by Cliff Kincaid
Reaganomics and Obamanomics in the Media and in Reality by Malcolm A. Kline, Don Irvine and Spencer Irvine
How State Budget Battles Could Mean More Criminals Back on the Streets by Michael Tremoglie
Radical Muslims, Environmentalists and the Green Jihad by Mark Musser
Russian-Backed Propaganda Networks Claim Obama is a CIA Agent by Cliff Kincaid
Media Conceal True Nature of Flash Mob Racial Violence by John T. Bennett
NBC’s Mitchell Should Resign Over Telling Gaddafi’s Lies (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) by Cliff Kincaid
CASA de Maryland: The Illegals’ ACORN by James Simpson
Special Report
The Newswire
Take AIM Podcast
In a
surprising admission, Barack Obama’s 40-page so-called “rebuttal” to Jerome
Corsi’s book, The Obama Nation, acknowledges for the first time that the senator
once had a personal relationship with identified Communist Party USA (CPUSA)
member Frank Marshall Davis, a key high-level operative in a Soviet-sponsored
network in Hawaii.
But the 40-page
report, advertised and sold to the media as a refutation of Corsi’s “lies,”
doesn’t identify Davis as a hard-core communist
and it dishonestly edits an article about Davis
to eliminate references to his admitted involvement in CPUSA activities and
make the black revolutionary writer and “poet” look like a civil rights
activist.
In fact, Davis
was a secret CPUSA member who continued his involvement in the CPUSA or its
front activities into the 1970s, when he met Obama. At this time, Davis was still involved with a CPUSA front organization,
the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, dedicated to keeping
foreign communists such as his friend and associate labor leader Harry Bridges
from being deported from the U.S.
Corsi’s book devotes part of chapter three, “Black Rage, Drugs, and a
Communist Mentor,” to Davis.
He credits our work in the text and footnotes.
Excusing Russian Aggression
This official Obama
campaign cover-up, which attempts to further mislead voters about Obama’s
mysterious and controversial background, occurs as serious questions are being
raised about Obama’s initial soft line toward the Russian invasion of Georgia. In his
first statement on the crisis, Obama failed to directly condemn the Russian
invasion. Obama “did not directly blame Russia” for the crisis, the New
York Times acknowledged.
Did Obama’s
position reflect inexperience in foreign affairs, the influence of advisers, or
an ideological tendency to take Russia’s
side in global affairs against the U.S. and its allies?
According to the
editor of Davis’s books, John Edgar Tidwell, Davis was not only a
secret CPUSA member but tried to recruit a prominent poet to the CPUSA. It’s
not known if he tried to recruit Obama into what was then an underground
communist movement in Hawaii because the major
media refuse to directly question Obama about his relationship with Davis, and Davis
died in 1987.
Curiously, Tidwell,
who has access to Davis’s FBI file and his
personal papers, has refused to talk about Davis,
even to a sympathetic reporter from the Associated Press, saying Davis has been victimized
by McCarthyite “smear tactics.” The AP story refused to identify Davis as a CPUSA member
and described him only as a “left-leaning” poet and journalist.
For his part, Davis appeared before the
Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1956, taking the Fifth Amendment when
asked about his CPUSA activities. His lawyer was Harriet Bouslog, another CPUSA
member.
The same Senate
subcommittee issued a report in 1956 declaring, “Founded in September 1919, the
Communist Party of the United
States of America is an organization unique
in American history. It is not a true political party and differs fundamentally
from all political parties in this country. It is in fact a Russian-inspired,
Moscow-dominated, anti-American, quasi-military conspiracy against our
Government, our ideals, and our freedoms.”
In 1982 testimony,
FBI assistant director for intelligence Edward J. O’Malley testified that the
CPUSA has been “one of the most loyal and pro-Soviet Communist Parties in the
world and has unfalteringly accepted Soviet direction and funding over the
years.”
The recent book, Comrade
J, based on interviews with a Russian spymaster at the United Nations,
documents that Soviet intelligence operations against the U.S. continued even as the Soviet Union
collapsed and Russia
emerged in its place.
Selective Editing
The Obama report admits
that the mysterious “Frank,” who was referred to several times in Obama’s 1995
book, Dreams From My Father, was in fact Frank Marshall Davis—something
AIM confirmed back in February. But in trying to rebut Corsi’s charge that
Davis was a significant negative influence over Obama, the Obama report on page
10 quotes “an article on Davis” that describes him as being involved in the
“labor movement” with other “African-American intellectuals” and committed to
racial integration and harmony. No title or name of the author of the article
is given. The article is simply identified as being from the Western Journal of
Black Studies.
We found a copy
through Questia, an online library of books and journals. The article, “Frank
Marshall Davis: A Forgotten Voice in the Chicago Black Renaissance,” was
written by Dr. Kathryn Takara, an Obama supporter who has been critical of
Accuracy in Media’s attempt to document Davis’s involvement in the CPUSA and
his mentorship of Obama. Takara is a radical poet herself, having written poems
in honor of Communist Party member Angela Davis and convicted cop-killer Mumia
Abu-Jamal. She was recently quoted in an Associated Press article that
portrayed Davis
as a positive influence on Obama and ignored his CPUSA membership.
The pro-Davis quotes
in the Takara article in the Western Journal of Black Studies, which are cited
in the Obama report, are actually preceded by Davis’s own incriminating words, in which he
says:
“From now on I knew
I would be described as a Communist but frankly I had reached the stage where I
didn’t give a damn. Too many people I respected as Freedom Fighters were listed
as Red for me to fear name calling.”
These quotes are
carefully omitted from the Obama report. Instead, the report only uses quotes
that make it appear as though Davis
was not an extremist of any sort.
The Obama report
also ignores the Davis
quotes in the article in which he talks about the “honor” of being targeted by
the House Committee on Un-American Activities and upsetting “the white power
structure.”
The Takara article
acknowledges that Davis
was investigated “due to his associates and involvement in what were considered
in the forties to be radical communist groups.”
Davis In Hawaii
On the recommendation
of two secret CPUSA members, Paul Robeson and labor leader Harry Bridges, Davis
moved to Hawaii in 1948, where he would later become a member of what an
official inquiry described as a secret communist underground organization.
Corsi’s book, which is
supposedly “Unfit for Publication,” according to the Obama campaign, cites the
congressional hearings and documents which identify Davis as a CPUSA member. It also quotes
instances from Obama’s own book, Dreams From My Father, in which Obama
talks about “Frank” giving him advice about various matters. For example, he
tells Obama that blacks have a reason to hate whites. Davis
also tells Obama that he should not believe the (expletive deleted) about the
American way of life and that he was, in the final analysis, just “a nigger” in
America.
Takara’s article,
written in 2002, acknowledges Davis’s
deep involvement in communist activities.
In one such instance,
the article says:
“However, by the time
he [Davis] returned to Chicago and the Renaissance, he inevitably associated
with people connected with the [Communist] Party since they were most likely to
be involved in civil rights, labor, art, and the fight for equality…it seems
that Davis did join the party for a short time, although on other occasions he
denied it.”
The Truth Be Told
So here we have it: in
an article cited by the Obama report as authoritative about Davis, he is acknowledged to have been a
CPUSA member. But the Obama report doesn’t mention this key piece of
information obviously because it confirms what Corsi reports in his book and
what AIM has been reporting since February.
In another part of
the article deliberately omitted by the Obama campaign, Takara notes that “Davis met Richard Wright
through his 1936 participation in the National Negro Congress, which was
alleged to be a Communist Front Organization.” Of course, the National Negro
Congress was an identified CPUSA front.
Takara says that Davis
had some contact with Wright over the years but that “Davis did not see Wright
again after openly criticizing Wright’s attack of [sic] the Communist Party
following the latter’s defection, although both men held on to the hope of
equality.”
Indeed, Davis was so extreme that
he attacked Wright for “treason” for breaking with and exposing the CPUSA.
Again, none of this is included in the Obama report supposedly rebutting
Corsi’s book.
CPUSA Fronts
In yet another part of
the article the Obama report ignores, Takara writes that “Davis joined the League of American Writers,
a national united front organization for the Communist Party mobilized by the
alarming rise of power of Hitler and Mussolini.”
In fact, Davis signed a statement
by the League of American Writers in June 1941 opposing war against Nazi
Germany at a time of the Hitler-Stalin pact. This was a reflection of the CPUSA
line. Davis
went from anti-war to pro-war after the Nazis attacked Stalin.
So here we have it:
another official acknowledgement by an Obama (and Davis) supporter that Davis was involved in a
CPUSA front. But the Obama report doesn’t admit anything of the kind. In fact, Davis’s entire record of
involvement in the CPUSA and its fronts is completely covered up.
Which raises the
question that we have asked on numerous occasions: why are Obama and his
followers in the media ignoring his documented relationship with a CPUSA
member? And why did Obama only refer to Davis
as “Frank” in his book?
In an August 5
editorial, drawing heavily on material published by Accuracy in Media about the
Obama-Davis relationship, Investor’s Business Daily took issue not only with
the concealment of “Frank” in the Obama book but the recent dishonest
Associated Press story about Davis and Obama. “If the relationship with Davis was as blasé as the
Associated Press makes it sound, why is Obama mum about it? And why did he try
to hide Davis’
identity in his first memoir, published in 1995?”
The paper said that
Obama had written that “With the exception of my family and a handful of public
figures, the names of most characters have been changed for the sake of
privacy.” Investor’s Business Daily added, “But there was no need to protect Davis’ privacy. He had
long been dead. More likely, the cryptic references to his communist mentor
were—and still are—designed to protect Obama’s background from the scrutiny it
deserves.”
The Cover-Up Continues
The shocking thing is
that this cover-up is continuing, in the form of the official Obama “Unfit for
Publication” report attacking Corsi. The cover-up is now so blatant that an
article that is generally sympathetic to Davis
has been edited by the Obama campaign in order to delete references to Davis’s CPUSA activities.
There must be a
deeper and darker secret, in terms of the relationship with Davis and those who knew him, that the Obama
campaign is trying to keep hidden. Otherwise, it would immediately begin to
disclose everything.
Gerald Horne, the
writer for the CPUSA journal, Political Affairs, who first disclosed Davis’s
relationship with Obama and his family, has told the Marxist publication that
he is now writing “a history of the radical, Communist and working-class
movement in Hawaii.”
He explains, “It is not well known, I’m afraid, that before statehood in 1959
probably the most vigorous, communist and radical trade union movement under
the U.S. flag was in Hawaii.”
Frank Marshall Davis
was a remnant of that powerful movement.
“At some point in
the future,” Horne said, in talking about Davis’s influence over Obama, “a
teacher will add to her syllabus Barack’s memoir and instruct her students to
read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis’ equally affecting memoir, ‘Living
the Blues’…”
While Obama’s
communist and foreign connections are of serious and ongoing concern in Corsi’s
book, his treatment of Obama’s admitted drug use has emerged as a special raw
nerve for the Obama campaign and his media acolytes. They realize that many
Americans, whose families have been decimated and destroyed by illegal drugs,
may recoil at the thought of having an admitted user of marijuana and cocaine
occupy the oval office.
The Attack Begins
Acting on information
provided by a left-wing group known as Media Matters, which functions as an
unofficial arm of the Democratic Party, the New York Times attacked Corsi for
charging that Obama has “yet to answer” whether he ever dealt drugs and when he
stopped, if indeed he ever did. The Times protested that Obama has answered
that charge, at least the part about quitting marijuana and cocaine, by saying
that he hasn’t used drugs since he was 20 years old.
The Times story
defending Obama against Corsi’s book was followed by a Washington Post story attacking the author.
The liberal media were forced to take note of the book because it became number one on the New York Times
bestsellers list.
So why did Corsi raise
the subject of drug abuse when it supposedly has been put to rest? It’s
because, as an experienced investigative reporter, he knows that a few
perfunctory denials, which could be expected from someone running for office,
do not constitute any form of proof or convincing answer that he in fact ever
did quit drugs. As Corsi has suggested in defending his book’s account of
Obama’s admitted drug use, self-reporting by drug users about when they quit is
notoriously unreliable. Every drug addict claims to have quit at one time or
another. That’s what drug testing is all about.
Joyce Nalepka,
president of Drug-Free Kids: America’s
Challenge, points out that recovering cocaine addicts say that the high from
cocaine is so intense that you never stop wanting it. She points to the case of
former Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, who was caught
twice using cocaine. Barry was caught in one case as a result of a police sting
and another because of court-ordered drug testing.
Don’t you believe
Obama when he says he quit drugs? “No,” replied Nalepka. “And I didn’t believe
Mayor Barry either.”
The Soros Connection
However, she does
believe that, if Obama is elected, his backers in the drug legalization
movement funded by billionaire George Soros will press for legalization of
marijuana, cocaine and other dangerous drugs. Soros is a big backer of Obama
and has contributed financially to his campaign.
During the Reagan
Administration, Nalepka served as the president of the anti-drug group that
Nancy Reagan served as honorary chair. She warns that Obama has “voted for at
least two pro-legalization [of marijuana] bills” and that drug legalization
advocates are spreading the word that Obama will not support federal
enforcement of federal marijuana arrests. She said a questionnaire, which
includes the question, “Do you support keeping drug possession, dealing and
trafficking a crime?,” has not been answered by the Obama campaign. John
McCain, on the other hand, vows to “uphold the law,” she says.
Even if Obama took and
passed a drug test, Nalepka says she would never vote for him, explaining, “It
appalls me at the thought that people would be naïve enough to vote for someone
who admits drug use.” She says this view stems from 30 years of “watching
parents wail and cry and talk about the hell their families went through”
because of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs.
But the views of
Nalepka and others in the campaign against illegal drugs have been ignored by
media anxious to accept Obama’s word that he has quit dangerous mind-altering
drugs.
“We worked long and hard to close those drug
paraphernalia shops in the 1980s and long and hard again to get student drug
testing in the schools so we could get drugs out of the schools,” she said.
“And we’re going to allow someone to come in to the White House of the United States of America
who was a drug user?”
Roger Morgan has
similar concerns. A San Diego
businessman whose two stepchildren became addicted to drugs at ages 12 and 14,
Morgan has spent 30 years dealing with the horrors of substance abuse. He was
the Founding Chairman of the Coronado SAFE Foundation; a past Director of the
San Diego Prevention Coalition; Co-Founder of Californians for Drug Free
Schools; and a member of the National Student Drug Testing Coalition.
George Soros and his
Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) “have infiltrated our government(s) at all levels,”
he warns, “and they effectively own the Democratic Party. We need a President
who has the courage and wisdom to mandate random drug/alcohol testing in all
schools for all kids in grades 6 through 12. That could happen with McCain. It
will never happen with a Soros-backed Democrat at the helm.”
Another line of
attack—that Corsi is doing the bidding of the Republican Party and the John
McCain campaign—makes no sense because Corsi writes very critically of McCain
and is a member of the Constitution Party, which is fielding its own
presidential candidate, Chuck Baldwin, this fall. Plus, Corsi’s editor at
WorldNetDaily, where he writes regularly, is Joseph Farah, whose book, None
of the Above, argues against Obama and McCain.
The pro-Obama media
emphasize that the Corsi book is published by Simon & Schuster’s Threshold
Editions, whose main editor is former GOP strategist Mary Matalin. The 40-page
Obama report dishonestly claims the Corsi book is “brought to you by the
Bush/Cheney Attack Machine.” But it is clearly the case that Corsi and Farah
are independent conservatives who have no allegiance to the GOP.
Corsi has written a
book on Obama for the obvious reason that there is little evidence that the
major media are interested in uncovering or publicizing the hidden facts about
him.
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About the author
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.
100 Comments for Media Abet Communist Cover-Up
Sigh…..and you once worked for a known drug dealer ….lied to congress….weapons…to Iran etc etc etc etc. See how it works Sigh?????
My dear little KKKliff: please stop expecting the media to pursue your hallucinations about Obama. Talking about your hallucinations is the role of your psychiatrist, not the media.
Months have gone by, and still MSM shows its extreme bias and being in the tank for Obama, and that American voters, in their opinion should not be told about Obama’s communist connections, and his connections with know drug users, abusers and pushers, as well as a noted sexual pervert.
The Obama campaign goes to extraordinary efforts to lie and cover-up these connections, and sadly, they are being successful in their efforts. It is 50 odd days to the election and the majority of Americans are ignorant of Obama’s great ties with this man.
Those extraordinary efforts include Obama stooges that deliberately go onto forums such as this to do whatever is possible to keep the rot in Obama from the public. I just wonder with this obviously well organized and controlled effort on Obama’s behalf, what has not been reported yet, and the ultimate goal here seems to be to keep the additional facts about Obama from ever seeing the light of day.
What has NOT been uncovered yet? Obama was a pusher himself? he has sex pervert issues himself after being around Davis and his drug using and abusing, dealing grandfather? What did happen when they were getting high? I doubt we will ever know as the MSM does everything they can to cover up these fundamental years in the life of a young and impressionable Obama. We may find out, but it will be after the fact?
The media’s hype and promotion of Obama has always been the reason I fear him.
Who is truly backing Obama and why?
No matter if this is trully a problem or not, there is one question that remains unanswered. What does Obama himself have to say about this? Why has NO ONE asked him directly about any of these questions? It is now admitted by the Obama campaign that “Frank” was indeed Frank Marshall Davis, so why not just end the questions by dealing with it?
If there is nothing there, why avoid, dodge and distort the truth about who Davis really was? Even the same article the Obama campaign cites to refute the book admits that he had strong ties to the CPUSA and was a member at least for a while.
Answer the questions directly and if there is nothing there, it will all go away. Or is that what Obama fears most? Facing the questions?
Any white canidate would have been out of the race before he even got started with Obamas baggage.
He associates with domestic terrorists, communists,and left wing kooks and we hear not a word from the press. Just think what a wrecking crew the press would be if he were a republican.
His community organising was a fraud and they compare him to Jesus. Of course if a republican were to refer to Jesus, they would be burned at the stake with the church and state playbook.
Then we have to read idiotic comments from left wing commies who present no facts to refute the articles.
The press would be tearing up the streets trying to find somebody who purchased drugs from Obama if he were a republican. Then they would come up with some junkie that they payed hundreds of dollars to tell some cock and bull story.
Either that or they would just go with the standard unmamed source. The damage would be done and their job complete. Half the country would believe it because they are to stupid to get the facts. That’s why it’s so hard for republicans to win. The press give the democrats a 20% advantage that is nearly impossible to overcome.
The cold war is over? I don’t think so.
Keep up the good work, Cliff! I happen to believe that you have only scratched the surface. . . My brother, a free-lance writer, has been investigating Obama with my help. We have found lots of information through the Internet, and the connections he has to leftist-leaning, Communist,people and organizations is enormous. And, it is also amazing how much of it disappears from the Internet after it is uncovered. I’d agree that Obama has a big cover-up team he is paying really well to keep us from finding these things out! Keep fighting the good fight!
Great, Cliff, but there’s more, much more: so-called liberation theology. Note well that while Obama has denounced his preacher and teacher of that same liberation theology, he has not recnated liberation theology. He has symbolically killed the messanger, but left the message in tact. After the liberation by peaceful means of Russian’s vassel states they went for capitalism in a big way. What the liberation theologists learn from this was that perhaps, just perhpas, socialism was not the answeer to all of man’s problems; so, not willing to give up their thesis entirely, they decided to give up their guns, bandannas, fire bombs and acts of civil disorder and achieve the sought for income redistribution in suits and ties and by running for political office. Hit on that Cliff, hit hard and often. It’s still all income redistribution.
Oh,my! Those dangerous Commies! When will this nightmarish Communist threat ever end? Obama will doubtless collectivize agriculture and call everyone “comrade”! Definitely a grave peril for our nation!
Cliff’s investigative research is some of the best! I’m also concerned about the liberation theology – Marxist – and Obama’s church’s Black Liberation Theology, teaching Black Supremacy. Type that into your search engine and be shocked! Obama was head of Harvard Law Review a few years after rules were changed to promote minorities in that position. Had he been white? And, his “community service” as director of Public Allies of Chicago netted him and his wife hefty salaries. So much for “volunteer” work. It included rounding up voters for future elections. The ACORN group he worked with uses Saul Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals,” that credits Lucifer as “the first radical…who earned himself a kingdom.” It’s a book on how to overthrow a government or any other organization. “The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION..All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.” Page 116 - Alisnky was Obama’s Marxist mentor. And we think we know Obama? Hardly!
From a old Cold Warrior: Read John Barron’s book “KGB:The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents” (Reader’s Digest Press, 1974) to get an understanding of their use of disinformation and the international communist goal of world domination. (I used this book as one of my sources for a college paper). Also, remember that former president, now prime minister, of the Russian Federation, Putin, was (and probabily still is) a high ranking member of the Soviet KGB.
Personally, I believe that the current US market and economic crisis is fertile ground for the Russians to offer to bail us out if Mr. Obama is elected. They have enormous financial and oil resources that they can use to entice our leaders with. It wouldn’t take much for us to be fatally drown into their final goal of taking complete control of the US. They have obviously already been quite successful in their infiltration of and influence over our educational system and our MSM. This was always one of the Soviet communist’s goals, especially our higher educational institutions, where they could most influence the thinking of our youth who would have no “history” to help them detect the ruse.
For all of this talk about impending doom of an Obama administration. What can be said about the current environment?
Whatever sort of doom scenario you postulate, it doesn’t matter. We’re already in that situation via a leader who passed your “muster” for president. GW Bush was clean as a whistle and yet here we sit, dumbfounded as to why our country is in such tatters.
Democrats simply aren’t as bad as most conservatives say. They actually have a better track record on running this country than the GOP.
Admit it, Clinton wasn’t that bad. Even rush secretly admits that he’d trade 4 years of Bush for 4 years of Clinton. Clinton ran the country well and gave Rush fodder for the culture war. Win-Win.
Last Point. There is absolutely nothing as bad as leading 150,000 men and women to war on a lie.
Nope, nothing tops that. You can’t talk your way out of it and it is of a magnitude of 1000x worse than any race baiting from rev. Wright or bombs set by Ayers.
Need I mention Mrs. Plame?
Patrick, I disagree about the Russians. While they have a lot of money, and they control a huge chunk of Europe’s energy supply, they are run by thugs. Those thugs are out for themselves, not for “Mother Russia” like the Communists were. They’re closer to the Mafia model than the Communist model.
They will always try to screw with the US due to their jealousy, but I doubt they will ever be able to take over control of the US. They’re more likely to get control over their former vassal states and perhaps continental Europe.
By contrast, the Chinese have adopted much of the best parts of Capitalism as taught to them by Milton Friedman and have significantly more national power in terms of both realized and potential wealth. It is far more likely the Chinese will get significant control of the US than Russia.
“… GW Bush was clean as a whistle and yet here we sit, dumbfounded as to why our country is in such tatters. …”
LOL! So now the Wall Street mess and the chickens of greedy paper-pushers on the Street coming home to roost is BushHitler’s fault. Is there nothing in this universe that isn’t his fault according to the irrational Left?
Matt, ask yourself how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac got into so much trouble when it was the Democrats who were “protecting” them? Barney (Fat Faggot) Frank was their “Defender in Chief” for the last 20 some years.
Your other dumbass talking points have been refuted so countless times it’s not even worth repeating the refutations. You are obviously too lazy to read or simply too brainwashed to care whether your “facts” are true or not.
People with your attitude of irrational followership are the problem.
Matt,
It isn’t the democrats I fear – it’s Obama.
There is something very wrong there. He is being put forward by the media, from day one. He was anointed the night he made his speech, some years ago.
He has gotten only token negatives, they have pushed him forward, protecting him all the way.
I’m thinking McCain was the other nominee to insure his election. For months on the campaign trial McCain wasn’t even in the running, suddenly he’s the front runner – why. Because Obama could beat him. There wasn’t anyone else out there that thrilled me, except Ron Paul, whom they silenced almost immediately. I’m just thinking a Duncan Hunter, maybe the Gov. of Mass. I’m thinking even Thompson, would have made a better showing against Obama.
This country’s manufacturing has been destroyed, by both parties. Now the financial industry is on the block. Does anyone not think the housing debacle that caused this, was not planned??
That should have been apparent to all of us. ‘When something is too good to be true, it probably isn’t’. That was the housing travesty.
So now is this country going up for bids? We already have allowed foreign companies to come in and operate our toll roads. What else have they sold. Our water rights?
We know that whatever company gets to drill for oil will be a global company – I don’t think we have any American-only oil companies.
Regardless of which of these men gets elected, illegals will get amnesty and have the vote. Through their vote, they can control large cities, areas, even maybe some states.
We have argued with each other, rah-rahed behind some mythical political party and refused to look elsewhere for candidates, so this is the results.
So what’s left??
“… This country’s manufacturing has been destroyed, by both parties. “
No, it’s been made too expensive by labor unions. Labor unions have become owners of the Democratic party.
Why is it that Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, and Honda are all doing booming car assembly and sales business in the US?
Because they don’t have the bloated overhead expenses of keeping idle workers on the payroll through union “job banks.” Because they don’t have the gold-plated retirement and health care insurance premiums that the not-so Big Three have built up over the last 50 years.
Unions served a very good purpose and can still serve a very good purpose if they get back to their reason for existence—a focus on their members rather than a focus on building their political and economic power.
Patrick,
I’m an old “Red fighter.” But right now I’m more cocerned about Putin’s Sudatenland gambit into Georgia than any direct threat to the US. A threat, yes, but not a direct threat. Although, one can hardly discount the strategic value of the pipeline which runs through Georgia. I am concerned that Obama tried to negate the importance of Russia’s incursion into Georgia. At first refering to it in moral equivalency terms,i.e., each party having grievances, blah, blah, blah.
One wonders if Obama’s world view, as in, “We are the word,” excludes recent world history. And you are right regarding the all too common lack history education for most of today’s voters.
I don’t have any children in school now to check this out, but I’m told that all of WWII and the Cold War ends up being, at most, a paragraph or two. On the entrance to the National Archives building on will find these words chiseled, “What is past is prologue.
My God help us.
Anon,
We cannot blame all this on the unions. They are a favorite whipping boy, but that isn’t the whole story.
Part of it was labor -yes.
Part is the fact there is no need to comply with environmental regulations, no workplace safety, no property taxes (or certainly not what they paid here), etc.
Also, I don’t know how much taxpayers subsidized some of those new factories, but that is part of it also. I do remember hearing Ronald Reagan talk about how the government was helping to build some in China.
So rather than upgrading their old factories, get the government and maybe Chinese government to build them for you.
Yes, we do get things that have a lower price tag – but they are not cheaper. I’m convinced the biggest savings was in quality.
Those cheap clothes at Wal Mart do not have lower price tags just because some poor little kid sewed them. They are cheaper because the material is cheap, the cut is much smaller, and the workmanship is shoddy.
Good quality merchandise once made in the US and sold at department stores, is now made in China, sold at Wal Mart and the quality is atrocious. The material is very bad, the cut is smaller, the workmanship is poor – now that’s where the little kids come in, I guess.
In fact, if it wasn’t being sold by Wal Mart, who can sell cheaper than most others can buy, it would be much more expensive.
A lot of the savings in labor is offset with transportation. Check how many trucks are on the highway today. My son lives too near a railroad track. I see the number of container trains.
Many things figure into this, labor is just one of them.
keco,
You’re so right about the double-standard in regards to investigating Dems and Repubs.
Can you imagine if the media had applied the same thoroughness of investigative reporting in regards to the Clintons during the ‘90’s?
Bubba, with his ultra-thin political skin, would probably pop a blood vessel in his well-known fits of rage, and both he and Hillary would probably be wearing orange jumpsuits these days, if all their dirt was exposed.
I haven’t seen the kind of level of intense scrutiny being done on Palin since the time Newt Gingrich became House Speaker.
matt,
I agree on your criticism of Bush, however disagree regarding Clinton.
Remember, when Clinton was elected in ‘92, he had both Houses of Congress, and yet the public revolted against him because of his highest-on-record tax increases and ‘gays in the military’ by electing a Republican majority House and Senate. While the Republican majority eventually screwed up by signing on with Clinton on such disasters as NAFTA, they kept him in check as far as any serious economic damage he could do. In fact, his balance budget proposals were rejected about a half dozen times by Congress because of excessive spending proposals within them before Clinton was able to sign onto the Balanced Budget Act of ‘97, thus receiving the credit.
There was some sense of fiscal responsibility with Republicans back then, but those days ended with the Bush Administration.
hyperman2, your hysterical reaction to Cliff Kincaid is so typical of partisan liberal demagogues. You only prove that Cliff has a valid point by trying to paint him as a hallucinating Klan bigot. Not once in any column can you show that Cliff’s objection of Sen. Obama as president is based on racial considerations.
Many of us conservatives would gladly have liked to see former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, former Sec. of State Colin Powell, former Reps. JC Watts or Alan Keyes, or even Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice (a little too closely tied to the neoconservatives for my tastes) running for president, perhaps even more than Sen. McCain. But like a good Democrat, you have a need to resort to whining about race or ethnicity rather than the fact that Sen. Obama is a liberal socialist Democrat on the left and has many past associations with socialists/communists that raise questions about to his beliefs.
Cliff has provided facts and references while you resort to base innuendoes and a hysterical ad hominem attack. Just who is the person with mental issues?
anonymous,
Adding to your point, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the creation of the Carter administration so as to provide low interest loans to the poor. The Clinton administration made the penalties for not providing such loans much more severe so banks went along with poor risks.
By the way, the airline mess also started by the Carter administration when it eliminated the CAB.
Many great points here. Let me tie some loose ends together that may surprise some people.
A key problem with Obama’s hidden background is that while it may be hidden from public, it is KNOWN, and as such, Obama and the DNC are susceptible to both national and international blackmail from numerous enemies of the U.S.
This was one of the same problems that the Clinton Crime Syndicate had to deal with in various ways. A Republican president couldn’t have survived even one of the Clinton scandals, much less a dozen of the major criminal/treason scandals that they treated the nation to in typical denial/stonewall fashion with full media coverup support. Anyone who doubts that needs merely to consider the impact of the cooked up “lied to us about Iraq” mantra that has been such a pivotal hammer to tank GWB’s public approval rating.
Speaking of Clinton, few people realize that the oversight committee rule changes (whether official or closed-door agreement to be blind) made with Clinton/Gore approval are the very source of the criminally irresponsible bank loans and the criminal (Enron) investment frauds that have been used to steal billions (trillions?) from citizens and from the US government. The danger of removing barriers to such schemes was obvious, which clearly implies that there were threats/pressures/payoffs of some criminal nature.
All of that brings up a far more ominous “more of the same” risk with Obama/Biden than could ever be had with McCain/Palin. Soros is probably a key player, but he sure won’t be the only one manipulating the puppets in an Obama white-house.
Regarding tax rates under Clinton, it is interesting to note that Obama tells us that “everyone, everyone who makes $250,000 or less will get a tax cut” similar to the tax rate under President Clinton. How do people not realize that our taxes were actually HIGHER under Clinton than they are under the Bush administration? He is refusing to re-instate the Bush tax cuts when they expire, which means that our tax rates will go up, not down.
Analyst,
Some good points, and absolutely true that Pres. Clinton got away with a lot of things, before and during his Presidency.
Ken Starr waded through the muck and mire of the Pres. and Mrs. Clinton’s past, spent $50M, took years, had the power of subpeona, grand jury, investigators, prosecutors, etc.
Other than prosecuting some other people, the only transgression he could find was lying under oath about Ms. Lewinsky.
I’m thinking most any other adult, and some kitty cats, could have found more. I think that was a whitewash.
I’m thinking rather he was chosen and groomed to do what he did.
That is what concerns me about O’Bama, I think he was groomed to be exactly where he is and he has some ‘service’ to perform.
President Bush and his family are not just simply Texas oil men. His family goes way back in world commerce, and politics, his father was head of the CIA, etc.
This Pesident Bush was just another in the line of heads of the country whose job it is to further the cause of the destruction of this country as a sovereign nation, and bring us closer to a world government.
I don’t think it will be blackmail, just doing what their employers, that’s not us, want them to do.
Obama does seem more frightening, but McCain is not much better – if any.
The media, in my opinion, however, has been most kind to President Bush. If the media had been doing it’s job, the questions about the war would have been asked BEFORE the war. They were very instrumental in the bombast, the flag waving, the chest beating that went on to whip the people into the desire for war.
This President isn’t running again, his ratings mean nothing. We are in the war and there is nothing to do but try to finish it and rebuild Iraq.
The press can now give some semblence of asking the questions. They don’t matter now. There will be no reprecussions to the architects of the war. We people of this country have short memories, we won’t remember and will be just as easily led next time – if we survive as a country.
The country is in a terrible economic and financial mess. This has many causes. But the major one is the deregulation approach to lending pushed by McCain, Bush and other Republican law makers and government officials since 2001.
But what are people on this blog worrying about? Paranoid nonsense that Obama is a Communist.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has nationalized huge financial institutions and may very well do the same for others. The amount of money involved and potential liabilities is staggering, running into the trillions of dollars. Government takeover and control of basic savings, lending, borrowing, investing institutions is the major economic foundation of Communism. So, either Bush and his advisers are Communists or there is no need to worry about Obama’s economic policies. What could he and Congress do that is more extreme than is happening under this adminsitration?
Meanwhile, McCain has suddenly reversed decades of his economic policies and is calling for more regulation. He has already admitted that he knows little or nothing about economics. Other than a commission, he has offered no solutions to the present and growing crisis. His running mate, Palin, is even more out of her depth in this matter. Given the huge subsidies Alaska receives from Washington, she is governor of a Socialist economy with little or no idea how a capitalist system functions.
Draw your own conclusions. But for the love of heaven, think about what REAL dangers are facing our country, not paranoid, dishonest and irrelevant AIM propaganda.
Whatever Obama does with taxes, we’ll just have to wait and see.
As to Pres. Bush tax ‘cut’, some of us didn’t get a cut. Along with the ‘cut’ to us, the monies promised states to pay for the things the federal government demands states do, was cut.
The mandate for those programs was not cut, however.
This left states with a problem. How do you balance the budget, make up for the shortfall, and if you have a large illegal immigrant population, pay for this added expense. These are politicians. The last thing a state legislator wants to been caught doing, is raising taxes. They are little closer to the electorate and more vulnerable.
Our schools are funded greatly by property taxes. These are collected on a local basis, but the state has a hand in it also. So the state decides all property must be ‘re-evaluated’. This means your taxes will go up. Some homes were evaluated above actually market value. Since only the evaluation was raised, they could say they didn’t raise ‘taxes’.
The fee for professional licenses and fees were raised, auto registration was increased, the cost for fines and permits were raised, more profession were deemed to need a license. How many more hidden ‘fees’ there were – who knows.
Our legislators stood there in front of the microphones with a straight face and said they didn’t raise taxes.
No matter how you look at it, what you call it, President Bush cut back what they took from your pocket and because of cut backs to the state, the state took more money from your pocket.
Maybe it made people feel better that they can say they got a tax cut and the increased ‘fees’ weren’t really taxes. Fact is, for many it was not more money in our pocket, but less.
We have to wake up and stop being flim-flammed. We need to pay attention to the man/men behind the curtain that are operating the smoke machine.
Yes we do need to look at the real dangers and we need to realize both parties have been complicit in this – truly they have.
Obama may, indeed, be a communist. His ultimate goal probably isn’t to make this a communist country – rather to just put a little more grease on the skid to world government.
Just wanted to share this with the “Obama can fix the economy” believers:
“Most economist will agree that one of the primary reasons we find ourselves in this economic crisis is primarily due to the practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (i.e. the mortgage crisis) and NOT deregulation. These mortgage lenders, and their “open border” style lending policies, which were ventilated by members of BOTH parties (but primarily begun by the Clinton administration and then continued by Bush), have basically caused the collapse of the housing market to such an extent that it has been naturally followed by the consequences that tend to follow said nebulous practices. Of course, “greed” in Wall Street is also part of the equation, a factor that clearly advocates for TRUE deregulation (i.e. NO BAIL OUTS nor corporate welfare), but then again, “greed” is the primary purpose of engaging in the speculative markets.
The question is, why and how did our politicians allow these corporate ‘monsters’ to “relax” their lending practices and lead us into this mess? The answer may be quite complex, but one of the main reasons lies within the social agenda of the Neo Liberals. Their obsession with making things “fair” and “equal” to the “average home owner” caused these unscrupulous lenders to see an opening that they could exploit, and thus they began to hand out countless loans to people who frankly couldn’t (and shouldn’t) afford them, thus creating a bubble that has recently blown in America’s face. As we all know, these same lenders would in turn sell these loans to China, Japan, and other banking vultures around the world.
So who are the top and true BFFs (”Best Friends Forever”) of the mortgage industry?
As we can assume, Fannie and Freddie had countless lobbyist in Washington, spreading money around like hot cakes to any politician who was willing to do their biding and continue these practices. The Center for Responsive Politics, a non partisan watchdog organization, has discovered that of all the lawmakers in Washington who have received money from both of these institutions, within the span of 19 years, the top three beneficiaries have been Democrats. Who, you may ask, and in what order?
1 = Chris Dodd: $165,400
2 = Barack Obama: $126,349
3 = John Kerry: $111,000
The above numbers reflect the contributions made to all lawmakers, from 1989 to 2008. This means that Barack Obama has basically surpassed every other lawmaker in Washington (the list is quite large) that has ever received (lobbyist) money from these institutions, even though he has only been there for a short 4 years (most of the time running for President). Obama even surpassed John Kerry, who has been in the Senate for more than 20 years (and many others who have been there for more than 40!)!
But Obama’s corrupt complicity to the economic crisis that we face today does NOT stop with the lobbyists and ‘cooperative’ executives who continously donate to his campaign. Obama also hired Jim Johnson as an economic adviser and as his chief Vice Presidential vetter. In the mid-1990s, Mr. Johnson headed up a power trifecta: mortgage giant Fannie Mae, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Brookings Institution, one of the city’s most prominent think tanks. Mr. Johnsons’ relationship with the embattled CEO of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, to his more recent oversight roles on various corporate compensation committees that approved hefty executive pay packages, have all linked this individual directly to our most recent sub prime mortgage debacles. Johnson also received at least $7 million worth of home loans from Countrywide through an informal program for friends of company CEO Angelo Mozilo, that offered rates below the market average
Obama’s current financial adviser, and sub prime mortgage “super star” Penny Pritzker, whose bank actually targeted minority customers for their schemes, also gives us a good preview of what his Presidential cabinet might look like. Clearly, Jim Johnson fits right into this crew of sleazy corporate/banking special interests, who have been clearly at fault for our current economic woes, and who have sufferend abosolutely NO CONSEQUENCE for their dirty dealings (they even got a “promotion” to work with “The One”).
We must then ask ourselves: Do we really want to elect a man who, even though has NO concrete legislative accomplishments during his short time in the Senate, has nonetheless been able to reach the NUMBER 2 spot in accepting money from the main culprits of the financial crisis in which we find ourselves in? Do we want to elect a man who claims to have the necessary “judgment” to “understand” our economy, but nevertheless surrounds himself with the worst examples of the “greed” and corruption that has tainted it? Of course NOT.
Let’s then look at the other side of the coin, and see if there was ANYONE in the Senate who actually ‘blew the whistle’ on what was coming our way and tried to do something about it:
McCain saw the handwriting on the walls, three years ago!!!
John McCain was one of three Republicans in the U.S. Senate to sponsor the bill. Rising to propose the legislation, Senator McCain’s words now sound prophetic:
Senator McCain Speaks in Support of
The FEDERAL HOUSING ENTERPRISE REGULATORY REFORM ACT OF 2005
The United States Senate
May 25, 2006
“Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae’s regulator reported that the company’s quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were “illusions deliberately and systematically created” by the company’s senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae’s former chief executive officer, OFHEO’s report shows that over half of Mr. Raines’ compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.
The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator’s examination of the company’s accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.
For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO’s report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.
I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.”
McCain took action in 2005 that might have helped us avoid the severity of this current financial crisis. Democrats also took action in 2005…and stopped McCain’s reforms.”
It’s interesting to note that John McCain was the original “whistleblower” on what could happen with the mortgage companies and the economy when regulations were relaxed. . .
How can we trust Obama, who says he can fix the economy, but once again (as he did in Chicago before), he is only lining his pockets with lobbyists’ money?
ladytexan,
Your suspicions of the very questionable motives of Ken Starr are right on target. Here’s what columnist Joseph Farah wrote in 2006 –
[“Remember those Big Media distortions during the Clinton years that portrayed former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr as the accomplished, right-wing hatchet-man out to “get” the president at all costs?
Remember how we heard Starr described as this conservative Republican mastermind who would stop at nothing to impeach Clinton?
Remember how it was reported that Starr was this vicious Torquemada, a determined ideologue who would crawl beneath any rock to find the goods on Clinton?
I admit I have been on a lonely, one-man mission to tell the truth about Kenneth Starr. Few want to hear the truth. Democrats have no desire to shatter the myth they helped create. And Republicans are in no hurry to expose the facade of one of their own.
Starr is back in the news, again. This time, he is accused of sending fake letters from jurors asking California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for clemency for a convicted rapist-murderer headed for death row. Starr has withdrawn the letters, all but admitting they were fraudulent.
Starr, now the dean of the Pepperdine University Law School, says he is taking the allegations of forged documents “with utmost seriousness.” He has tried to blame one of his investigators for the mistake.
I would have assumed an offense like that was punishable by disbarment or at least a contempt-of-court charge. But don’t expect Starr to be punished.
He never is. He never pays a price for his actions. As an establishment Republican “fixer,” he is all but immune.
Once again, here’s my take on Kenneth Starr.
My first experience with Starr came as an investigative reporter stunned at the level of corruption in the Clinton administration. The case against Clinton on scores of serious charges was overwhelming. I couldn’t figure out why Starr was ignoring the most serious and focusing on the least serious.
I couldn’t understand why he fired prosecutors who were building a real case against the White House, while he botched even the measly Monica Lewinsky business.
Then I began to figure it out.
Starr was not an independent investigator at all. He was the designated “fixer.” He was the cleaner. He was the handler. He was the guy who protected the powerful from themselves.
As I’ve said before, Starr was either the most incompetent prosecutor in the history of the country or complicit in the cover-up of those crimes. I lean toward the latter judgment.
I’ll keep telling and retelling this classic Kenneth Starr story until people start to wake up and understand who he is and what he is.
In 1981, it was young Justice Department lawyer Kenneth Starr who authored “a hurriedly prepared, error-filled memo,” according to Robert Novak and Rowland Evans, that convinced President Reagan to go through with the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the court – despite tremendous opposition from those who believed she was unfit and unworthy of Reagan’s support.
The memo gave O’Connor a clean bill of health on abortion by “using legal gymnastics to explain her Arizona legislative record,” wrote Evans and Novak. He wrote that she had “no recollection” of how she voted on a 1970 bill to legalize abortion when, in fact, she was a co-sponsor of the measure that was defeated 6-3 in committee.
Starr misrepresented that O’Connor was something of a friend and associate of Arizona pro-life leader Dr. Carolyn Gerster. In fact, Gerster told Evans and Novak: “I had an adversary position with Sandra O’Connor” and called her “one of the most powerful pro-abortionists in the [Arizona] Senate.”
So-called “conservatives” have continued to give Starr a pass on this monstrous disservice to Ronald Reagan and America. They blamed everyone except Starr for the failed impeachment of Bill Clinton. I wonder what excuses they will come up with now to defend Starr against the latest charges he used fraud to try to stop the execution of a rapist-murderer in California.
The Starr historical legacy can best be summarized like this: He deceived President Reagan about O’Connor, let Clinton off the hook for monstrous crimes and used chicanery to prevent the execution of justice in California.
Just what is it about the career of Kenneth Starr that some still find so heroic and laudable? Just what is it that Starr has done right?”]
Enough said?
KrysCford’s false figures.
Take a look at the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) website regarding the figures for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae contributions to politicians.(It’s very easy to find on the internet.) Then scroll down through the comments about that particular article. You will quickly see that the methodology for the figures cited for Dodd, Obama and Kerry is deeply flawed, misleading, even dishonest. Notice too how the contributions from those sources to McCain are left unmentioned.
In addition, most economists do NOT agree that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac activities are the major cause of present economic and financial problems. (How would KrysCford know, in any case? Who has taken a such survey of economists?) To the contrary, it is deregulation, heavily pushed by McCain and others sharing his economic philosophy, that is the root cause of present turmoil and future suffering. Why else would McCain suddenly be reversing his previous, strongly-held, positions on the matter?
Dont take my word on this. See for yourself on the CPR website under “Update: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Invest in Lawmakers.” THEN, read the revealing comments that follow. CPR may claim to be “nonpartisan.” But that hardly equates to objective and honest.
I don’t think one has to be an economist or an expert in mortgage lending to realize that following a politically correct way of doing business by granting out loans to people who can’t afford to pay them back, is a path to certain financial ruin.
If a candy store allows those with little money to just take things off the shelves in return for an I.O.U., that candy store’s days of staying in business will be very limited, to say the least.
Also, capitalism, the free market system and free trade are the proven best forms of financial policy a government can follow. However, extending the level of freedom and deregulation in regards to those policies to the point of anarchy as explained by KrysCford, may not be Communism, (in fact, it’s the reverse), but will result in the same impending economic consequences and misery for society, with no ‘golden parachutes’ at out disposal, such as those have who got us into this mess.
Piacaj!
I’m glad to know someone else was thinking along those lines. I’ve posted that many times before and you are the first one to suggest it might have some credence.
I used to watch all kinds of news, read internet stories, and sometimes get an inkling. Sometimes I’m way off base.
Actually, my reasoning usually starts with what we are seeing isn’t what we are getting. I’m totally cynical about all politicians, so I seldom ever even entertain the possibility what they are doing is honest, honorable, or for the good of the country.
That doesn’t always help me arrive at the truth, but it clears away any emotional attachment to persons or parties that might cause me to lean one way or another.
I’m thinking both parties shared in this financial debacle and both profit from it.
Yes, there seem to be no golden parachutes for the rest of us.
KrysCford makes good points, including that the FreddieMac problems started with Clinton and continued with Bush. However, one of the critical reasons for that Bush continuation, as well as many of the “Bush Admin” maladys is that Bush and the vast 99%+ of Republicans have failed to understand what was being accomplished in the Clintons admin. Beginning in their first month with the firing of every attorney in the AG’s office, with the National Park Service changes, with Hillary’s Travelgate and dozens of completely unknown changes, they were following a plan to establish a liberally-controlled crime syndicate within the framework of the bureacracy – which to that point had still been largely run by principled US citizens who held both major parties to the same rules.
One of Bush’s greatest obstacles has been his inability to understand the expanse or severity of this undercover criminal control of the federal bureaucracy that was established and hidden during the Clinton era, and well crafted to support and hide international crime and treason… which directly contributed to the inability of the key intelligency agencies to collaborate. Ashcroft’s failures proved that until the web is recognized and the corruption rooted out, it will be difficult for anyone to re-establish a Justice Department out of the current Injustice Department.
Star was always a RINO, and I read a report many years ago of how he was privately introduced to and befriended by Clinton. I think he was identified in Arkansas as a possible coverup artist that could be tapped when the criminal s*it hit the media fan.
At it’s roots, the common theme with leading Democrats, socialists, communists, left-wingers, facists, muslim terrorists, etc, is that they all want a corrupt government that they and their friends can control for fun, illegal profit, social experimentation, power, and the crushing of anyone who stands against them. This is why they all uniformly hate and ridicule Christians, Jews, the Constitution, and the principled law-abiding people who humorously align themselves with such ideas that there are absolute laws from a Lawgiver and an entire national history and uniform body of Founding Fathers who firmly believed in those principles and enshrined them in our nations institutions and laws. This is also why, despite massive scientific evidence that macro evolution has never and could never occur, they believe evolution is a “scientific fact” – not only flying in the face of the strong majority of the public, of science teachers and doctors, but also dictating what the public WILL believe and censoring both facts and free speech to the contrary.
Because of their hatred of good principles and common sense, they are at war with the heart of America and most Americans, although they rarely discuss it in the open public air. They live and breathe and practice deception, just as one of Planned Parenthood’s spokesmen told teenagers in mentoring training back in the mid’90’s: “you don’t tell parents the truth – you tell them what they want to hear”. This is one of the heartfelt hardcore beliefs of the forked-tongue Left in all its variations: the art of using convincing deception to accomplish what they want and to thwart what is best for America and its’ government of, by, and for the people.
The Democrat party positions on such extremes as euthanasia and partial-birth abortion cannot be excused or minimized: they are the required mental excrement that is produced by the belief that murder of the innocent is an acceptable solution to awkward social problems. As abortion supporters in the ‘70s said in a moment of rare candidness, “we had to deal with the realization early on that the Nazis really did nothing wrong.” Exactly.
Palin and McCain appear to bring two vital things to this contest for the future and survival of our country: a passionate heartfelt determination, and a belief and acknowledgement that they have god-given and constitution-certified trusts of responsibility to uphold in a world where there ARE divinely appointed absolutes of right and wrong to which everyone is held accountable – no matter how shrilly the Left may scream about those facts. Does that equip them to succeed? Not necessarily. Does a realization that truth and good and evil exist guarantee that they will make no errors? No. But those are prerequisites that completely disqualify Obama. Without a passionate heart to stand firm regardless of the threats and pressures, no candidate can accomplish lasting good for this nation.
Obama – change we can believe in… if we’re gullible enough.
To Analyst:
Finally a clearer response to the premise of my post. Thank you!
Oops. The Planned Parenthood training quote was from the mid 80’s, not ‘90’s.
You’re traveling through another dimension. A dimension not only of Christian fiction and radical right wing propagandist lies, but of utter ideological theological despair. A psychotic journey into a surreal land of lunacy whose boundaries in Christian Republican myth, magic, superstition, fiction and fantasy knows no limitations. That’s an AIM church signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone!
You unlock this door with the key of Christian and radical right wing indoctrination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of Christian Republican myth and magic, a dimension of fascism, a dimension of authoritarian personality disorder. You’re moving into a land of both religion and recidivism, of god, greed and guns. You’ve just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.
It is a bizzaro alternative dimension beyond that of reality and sanity. It is an opposite dimension to reality where fiction turns into fact, fact becomes fiction, lies are twisted into truth, truth turns into lies and it all becomes quite evil. You’re moving into a land of black and white absolutes where superstition trumps science and the pit of man’s age-old fears limits the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imaginary Sky Gods and leaders falsely claiming to speak for their fictional sky gods.
This is an area known as AIM ‘The Twilight Zone’.
I believe it about Planned Parenthood.
President Clinton is not off the hook for anything. They were very destructive.
I do sense, however, a little ‘Pres. Bush didn’t understand’, ‘the Rep messed up voting in NAFTA’. I’m thinking that is being a little to easy on them.
Ronald Reagan was the one to first tout NAFTA. As much as I enjoyed seeing him as President, he was too much of a free trader. I don’t remember how much it was promoted during Pres. Bush, Sr, term, but must have been pretty much. Remember Ross Perot’s ‘giant sucking sound’. NAFTA was not just a Democrat idea.
They are all to blame all of them.
You can’t accuse one for being evil for doing something and the other portrayed as someone duped or just ignorant (true sense) when they go along and aid and abet.
I can see sometimes why people find so much fault with religion, I do. The fault is religion, though, not God.
Abortion is an abomination to nature and to humanity, whether you believe in God or not.
There was a time if you did business with a company, you pretty much were assured they were honest. Now we do not have that assurance even from some of the biggest it seems.
Today you can be cheated by the telephone company, satellite company, hospitals, doctors, credit card, etc.
I’m thinking taxpayers got royally scammed by these mortgage companies and everyone involved in the housing fiasco.
Our very own government and businesses are working hand in glove to fill this country with illegals. The lawbreaking and dishonesty that IS part the illegal situation is just astounding.
We all see it. Whether you have warm and fuzzy feelings for illegals or not, it is breaking the law, lots of them. How can that be tolerated, even applauded by some.
Making sure the border stays open for illegals, is also letting in drugs that is destroying lives, costing us millions, causing pain and suffering to those not even taking drugs.
We need a real rebirth in this country of morality, honesty and honor. It doesn’t matter if you call it Christianity or just ‘doing the right thing’.
As I understand it Fannie Mae was created as a government agency in 1938 during FDR’s New Deal to provide a stable mortgage market for lower income people and became a private corporation in 1968 so that the government could raise money. Freddie Mac was created in 1970 at the beginning of the Nixon administration as a counter balance to Fannie Mae to prevent Fannie Mae’s monopolization of the housing mortgage market. While privately owned till now, as government chartered entities they enjoy certain government assurances for liquidity and stability. It seems there are parallels to the Federal Reserve Bank, another private entity.
Much of the current housing mortgage market instability has been blamed on the current Bush administration, seemingly for partisan political purposes in an election year. Yet the real problem stems from two previous administrations. During the Carter administration laws were passed to ensure low cost loans to high risk people, particularly minorities in order to end the alleged practice of “red lining.” During the Clinton administration these laws were toughened making the financial penalties for banks much higher, resulting in banks approving suspect loans rather than risk litigation and penalties. Many of these loans wound up in the portfolios of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. While the Bush administration must also bear some responsibility as the administration was warned of problems at least five years ago, it has been largely the Democrats who have resisted reform.
As reported on Wikipedia, “As Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank “sits at the center of power”. Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, was quoted as saying, “He is one of the giants of Congress, a real legislator,” in his new role.
In 2003, Rep. Frank rejected Bush administration and Congressional Republican efforts for the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis. Under the plan a new agency would have been created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry. “These two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” Frank said. He added, “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
The rest is history.
Analyst,
With regard to President Clinton, I believe there’s more to President Clinton’s impeachment than meets the eye. Most partisan Democrats like to claim he was impeached for getting a BJ. Not so; he was impeached for lying under oath, a felony. But could he have been impeached on other charges?
Remember that Pres. Clinton took campaign donations from a foreign power, a violation of federal law. He then gave that power sensitive missile and military information that greatly increased the accuracy of that power’s missiles. Subsequently that power used that technology to the detriment of the US. Could Clinton’s actions have been considered treason? Were Star and the Republicans willing to impeach Clinton for such?
Trying to blame the current economic and financial crises on the Carter and Clinton administations is plain nuts. Carter left office in early 1981, nearly 28 years ago. To argue he is to blame for the mess we are in now is like blaming William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt for the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s!
Clinton left office in January 2001. With a Republican White House for the past seven years and eight months, together with a GOP-controlled Congress from January 2003 to January 2007, who else but they are responsible for failing to supervise Wall Street, control government spending and heed warnings of a coming financial meltdown? Also, if they inherited problems from Clinton, why didn’t they fix them?
Remember the arguments during the 2000 campaign about what to do with the surplus? Bush inherited an economy in fine shape. We finally had budget surpluses. We were actually paying down the national debt. Those were Clinton administration successes. Who wouldn’t prefer the prosperity of 1993-2001 to the situation we are in now and the even worse troubles that are rushing toward us?
What happened after Bush entered office? Huge tax cuts, followed by an unnecessary war in Iraq. That was a war, let me remind you, based on deliberate lies. Remember Wolfowitz assuring us that Iraqi oil would pay for it all? Remember Gen Eric Shinseki being trashed by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for warning the war could not be won quickly and cheaply? Did Bush raise taxes to pay for the war? Did he increase our ground froces to fight it? Instead, he just let the national debt soar upward and refused to expand the Army and Marine Corps to the size necessary.Did he and the Republican Congress do anything to control spending or limit the expansion of the federal government? Quite the opposite. We got the disfunctional Department of Homeland Security of Tom Ridge, including the wrecking of FEMA under dear old “Brownie.” (Does anyone want to blame the Katrina disaster on Carter and Clinton?)
For the past five years, the Bush crowd followed a policy of guns AND butter – coupled with incompetence on every level of government. (Remember Donald Rumsfeld, who shrugged off hundreds of Ameriacan dead due to failure to supply them with armored vehicles? “Stuff happens” was his wonderful explanation. Remember Alberto Gonzales, our beloved ex-Attorney General?) Borrowing and lending were deregulated to allow insane fiscal and financial irresponsibility. McCain cheered all that economic blundering on. Until just a few days ago, he was STILL insisting deregulation was the way to go. And people on this site are blaming Carter (!!!) and Clinton for this unholy mess? WAKE UP!
Roberto,
Yes, there was more to Pres. Clinton’s impeachment than meets the eye.
The impeachment proceedings was when I really admitted to myself that the Republican Party was just part of the same gang and were just puppets on strings.
Had I been the one to make the decision, the Republicans would have passed on that ridiculous, embarrassing procedure. There is no other way to explain what took place than this was just manipulation of the public. A degrading one at that.
When the Clarence Thomas hearings were taking place, I was as sickened. Back then, though, I still had a bit of partisanship going, and thought it was just those dastardly democrats.
Think abought what those two hearings brought to the public. Nothing about either of those two men’s ability to perform in a job for this country – nothing. Just salacious gossip and the entire country and the world was exposed to it.
We need to clean house up there, really we do. We need people with honor and integrity and self-respect. No much of that has been shown in Washington for a number of years.
i find it ironic (not to mention extremely hypocritical) that the right continues to spin Obama’s alleged association with a communist as such a massive scandal, and further accuse him of harbouring communist policy aims…etc., when the biggest real thing that summons the spectre of communism—and has actually happened—has been the federal bailout of finance companies. $85 billion dollars for AIG? Let the thieving speculators drown, for chrissakes! Meanwhile, AIM and others keep bantering this abject nonsense about Obama’s supposed ‘communist connection.’ This is really pathetic. There are things that actually should be of concern to this country, and they’re being ignored in favour of this mindless banter.
My friend once pointed out an extremely relevant point—that when corporate interest merges with government interest, that’s precisely how fascism takes hold. Now, i’m not using fascism as a characterisation here—i’m talking real, bona-fide socialist totalitarian fascism. In previous conversations here, we’ve touched on the subject of how the march toward Marxist communism begins (as defined in the Communist Manifesto itself) the seizure of the means of production by the government—that’s what socialism is!
Oh, but let’s ignore that, and talk about Obama! That’s productive…
AIM Twilight Zone:
Hey, that was pretty good. The only quibble was the focus on right-wing and/or Republicans. Mystic wierdos are on both ends of the political spectrum.
BTW, fascism is only slightly to the right of the Y axis on the political compass, but it’s up there at the authoritarian end of it. Authoritarians are just that whether their “religion” be socialistic or capitalistic.
“… the principled law-abiding people who humorously align themselves with such ideas that there are absolute laws from a Lawgiver and an entire national history and uniform body of Founding Fathers who firmly believed in those principles and enshrined them in our nations institutions and laws. …”
Well, I was with you until that phrase.
The founding fathers were children of the “Age of Reason” and it’s successor the “Age of Enlightenment” which were the dawn after the darkness of the Dark and Middle ages where religion ruled. While they knew Reason and Individualism were the keys to Liberty, they still couldn’t quite give up the mysticism of Deism. Thus the words:
“When in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation. ”
Hmm… this was clipped off my last post:
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.”
Note the emphasis on “Powers of the Earth,” “Laws of Nature,” “Respect to the Opinions of Mankind,” and finally the means to secure Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness: a government created by Men, not some supernatural being.
Deism was an attempt to separate religion from human events, and to put greater reliance on Reason, albeit in a world still strongly dominated by religious obsession. The Deist principle of characterising god as a ‘watchmaker’ was another way of saying, “Yes, god created the universe, and set forth its laws, but to wait for him to answer prayers, to choose sides in the affairs of mankind is to succumb to indolence—precisely the reason the Dark Ages saw so little advancement.” True atheists were given little shrift at that time. While some intellectuals were inclined to say there was no god, they knew that in a still-hyper-religious world, saying so was suicide to one’s credibility. So, taking moderation, it was more useful to their cause to say that god did exist, but remove him from present affairs.
Roberto, you’re closer to correct than Analyst about dates, but:
Freddie Mac was created as the equivalent of Fannie Mae to service the savings and loan industry where Fannie serviced the regular (i.e., not investment banking) banking industry. Both served as intermediaries to the Treasury, borrowing funds from the Treasury at low rates and using those funds to buy mortgages from the banks and S&Ls;. That enabled the banks and S&Ls;to take the mortgage liability off their books and loan the funds out as yet more mortgages to sell to Fan and Fred.
Fannie and Fred made their profits on the differences between the interest paid to the Treasury versus the interest the mortgagees were paying to Fannie and Fred.
None of that had anything to do with trying to address monopolization: in fact the effect was just the opposite. That’s why emperor zero is bragging about owning 50+% of the homes in his Empire of Arugula. (LOL!)
i call dibs on the tin-foil-hat concession!
looks like business will be booming as the ‘blame clinton for everything’ crowd gets all fired up and frothing.
you are wrong: it’s actually all reagan’s fault.
that’s a bad joke, huh?
he can’t be blamed cuz he had no idea what was going on around him… [ask cliff how his boss was able to operate a drug and gun peddling operation right under his nose…]
so we get to blame bushco for things that go haywire in like the year… 2030 then, right?
BS or whoever you are,
I was going to try and explain the history of how we’ve arrived at the present crisis in which both Democrats and Republicans share blame but seeing that it’s you posting I realize that would be futile as you’re probably just running another psyops Major Professor. Nothing you post now can be taken seriously.
ladytexan,
Isn’t it great that the major parties keep on giving us such great choices?
Clinton was a rapist who committed treason. Bush has decimated the Constitution. Had we elected Kerry we would have had another man who had committed treason during the Vietnam War. Gore would have bought the Kyoto Protocols and made the US a 3rd world country. Obama is a socialist and McCain is likely beholden to the neoconservatives.
And none of them took or backed action against foreseeable economic problems that may lead us to at best a serious recession and at worst a depression. Sure, Bush has failed, but remember, that we’ve also had a Democrat do-nothing congress for 2 years.
BTW, the Republicans were in no position to pass finding Clinton guilty as they didn’t have the needed super majority. Remember the Democrats said no matter what the evidence they wouldn’t vote to convict and they voted in mass against removal of Clinton.
I guess we got the worst congress and leaders money could buy. Or perhaps this is no accident. Considering that the crisis will dry up money for small businesses which create about 70% of our jobs but will bail out big business and big banks, could this be part of a plan for a socialist or fascist regime, or a combination of both?
blackhat, what’s pathetic is that you refuse to realize that Sen. Obama is a socialist along with many Democrats has a socialist agenda. You compound that by lying about the right not discussing the disastrous corporate socialism that’s occurring with the bailout of big banks and corporations.
Of course you’d like to divert the topic of this forum from discussing whether or not we should avoid voting for one of the most liberal senator around. No doubt you won’t admit that other forums discuss the economic crisis because you want to restrict speech to bashing conservatives and Republicans.
@Roberto Benitez: You appear to be a person of above-average intelligence, and thus it baffles me that you’re apparently unable to discern between debate and ‘bashing.’ If i wanted to “restrict speech to bashing conservatives and Republicans,” as you say, then i would conduct myself with appropriate crassness. This is a debate (at least ostensibly), and i’m presenting an argument.
As for ‘diverting the topic,’ i am attempting nothing of the sort. i was merely remarking upon the irony that while AIM continues to spread unsubstantiated rumors about Obama being a communist, and the Democrats having a socialist agenda, the recent government bailouts of Bear Stearns, Fannie May/Freddie Mac, and AIG is tantamount to a socialist manoeuvre.
i’d be interested to know your feelings on the matter, actually—would you agree that it’s a wanton misuse of tax dollars for the government to be providing ‘corporate welfare?’
For the record, i don’t believe Obama is a socialist, nor a communist. There is, of course, the possibility that i’m dead wrong, but regardless, just as i don’t believe responsibility for the dire state of the union at present rests entirely on Bush—that it takes far more than one man to cause an entire nation to sink to such lows—an Obama presidency (or a McCain presidency, for that matter) is unlikely to sound the death-knell of America.
Let’s pretend for a moment that Obama is indeed a hard-core communist, whose entire political career is aimed at supplanting American capitalism with a Leninist model of communism. Even in the case of this outlandish exaggeration, the fact remains that the President is but one man.
Roberto,
When I said the Republicans should have passed, I meant they should have refused to play along with the chrade of an impeachment for such a filthy case.
It made them look foolish. We, the entire nation, was mired in that filth for weeks.
My thoughts are that it is possible it was just part of the plan. The American people knew that Pres. Clinton was crooked and had been. They expected something to be done. So they get together and made sure the only thing brought up is so minor, and so trashy, we just wanted it to go away. That was the end of any investigation into the Clintons.
Obama may be communist, but that just isn’t my worst nightmare about him. I’m thinking he is more dangerous than that. How could he be more friendly to the Communist than our government has been for the past decades?
This has been working right along for far too long for it to be dimissed as merely partisan politics. Everyone has worked to destroy this country.
This country had to be brought to its knees before it could be forced into the New World Order, or whatever you call it.
Think destroying it’s manufacturing base, destroying families finances with cheap goods,
think flooding this country with illegals to take jobs, be supported by taxpayers, to weaken our education system, drain our social programs, and allowing them to flaunt our laws AND vote in our elections
think demolishing our financial industry by either allowing, or promoting bad loans
think fighting a costly, unwise, and unnecessary war – on borrowed money – from China, no less
No, I think this was both so called parties acting to bring this country down, so we will be in such a state we will beg them to take over this country.
LadyTexan – now you know why Conservatives are putting so many hopes on Palin, or you may already know that? If she is the reformer she seems to be, and she can get McCain on the same track? We already know that McCain is part of the enemy, he just is not as much an enemy as Obama. It really depends on if McCain is telling stories again – just part of the political game to get elected. It seems he may cave on ANWR to Palin, but he still recently sold out on the Global Warming scam, and we know he loves all the illegals we can get, and loves selling out our soverignty – so it really depend on if Palin can get him headed in the right direction.
He seems to realize that we are kind of forced to have the government keep the economy from collapsing right now, but that he wants that ended really fast and not made permanent, and we know Obama wants every aspect of the economy controlled by government, and that will destroy us. McCain seems to have soured on the UN after they knifed him, so hopefully he is on the road to showing them the door.
It all depends on McCain, and if Palin is who I think she is? Of course, we then have to fight the criminals Pelosi, Reid and Company as they will do whatever they can to keep anything good from happening for America, but we can’t do that unless there is the right team at the top.
If McCain turns out to be who he has been and we can not get him replaced with Palin in 2012, I suspect we can just write off America though.
ladytexan,
You are so on the mark, it’s scary!
This is why I consider people such as Bush, Cheney, McCain, Clinton, Gore, and the rest of these globalists as unadulterated evil entities.
They are parasites.
They are a cancerous tumor to this nation.
They hate the founding fathers and our Constitution the same way we would hate some thug who broke into a close relative’s house, massacred them in cold blood, and then laughed in your face during their trial.
ladytexan, you are a depressing person. No comment can be made here without you putting a negative, pessimistic spin on it. You rants on China and cheap goods remind me of the Japan-trashing of the 50s and 60s. I’ll bet you did plenty of that in those days too.
If any of you want to know what’s destroying this country, check your premises. It isn’t Republicans or Democrats, but both. It isn’t hatred or a wish to destroy the nation. It is ignorance and a complete acceptance of altruism and the belief that sacrifice is a virtue that is destroying this nation.
I forgot to include anti-rationality as one of the evils destroying this nation. That one should have been first on the list.
Roberto:
Were you addressing my post #48 in your post #50? I am not Brian Sullivan, nor as TK likes to imagine, John Galt.
I read the Wall Street Journal and have been soaking up a lot of interpretations of the recent financial system failures. I’m all ears (eyes?) to hear (see?) what you think the causes and implications are.
Also, many here conflate the economy in general with the financial system in this discussion of the Wall Street meltdown. While McCain didn’t know what he was saying or why, he was closer to reality when he said the economic fundamentals are strong. It is the credit system, particularly the short-term credit system that’s really out of whack here.
The incredible fact is that people who should know better are treating certain financial instruments that have value as if they have no value now. Because certain of those instruments are “toxic” due to the unknown risks buried in them, people are refusing to buy them. They are in fact not worthless, there just is no market for them at this time.
“Mark to market” is meaningless when there is no market for something. What the government is doing is taking those instruments off the market by buying them up or accepting them as collateral on loans. At some future point the values of those instruments will be better known and the government will be able to find buyers for them.
Lets hope the government makes a LOT of money buying the stuff and selling it later. Maybe, just maybe, Congress will give some of that money back to taxpayers (not those who pay NO taxes) or take less from us as a result.
Brian Asshole Sullivan, when you trash LadyTexan why don’t you have the balls to post under your own name instead of using your John Galt alias? You know another way to figure out your aliases Brian Piece of #### Sullivan is that you and your aliases ALWAYS trash everyone that posts on the AIM site. And since you don’t trash your aliases, its easy to figure out who they are.
Sorry LaqdyTexan, I am having a send off by having one last shot at the despicable Brian as I will be leaving this site. AIM has told me one time to many they have the Sullivan problem under control and I finally got the message – that they are lying and would rather lose all their posters rather tha offend Sullivan.
And since when he is on the site nobody can have a conversation with out him doing what he is so good at, it is really not worth anyones time to be here. Last night it was just him and his aliases posting – he keeps running everyone off.
You did have me fooled Brian on the John Galt alias. At one time I figured you were both the same but you changed tactics and really had me fooled that you were two seperate people. And then you screwed up today on the other thread and gave yourself away – and of course while doing it you were trashing LaDonna on that thread as you are trashing LadyTexan on this thread, and you don’t even have the balls to use your own name and have to trash people using various aliases. And you actually have the gumption to call other people psychotic.
LadyTexan, sorry Brian John Galt anonymous Sullivan had to trash you. I told you this man was a really sick one. Yeah, and I know, I am supposed to turn the other cheek – not now, and besides it will give him something to further trash me about, and he can also gloat he run someone else off. It should be fun LadyTexan to watch him gloat using more than one alias, even though now you know it is just despicable Brian gloating himself more than once.
Eat #### and Die – Brian – now that was christian of me!
Jack,
I told you, ignore them. They have no power if you just ignore them. They have only the power you give them.
Whatever you do, don’t stop posting.
Giving the time of day to those who are nasty, is a waste of my time and at my age, that is getting more and more precious.
Truly, I know how hard it is at first – but after a couple of times, you realize they can only have the effect you allow them. You are in control here, not them.
My husband tells nasty people, “I’ve been 68 years without you in my life, I think I can manage a few more.”
From you lips to God’s ear – about McCain and Palin.
I do hope that some sanity can return to our government.
I agree we stand a better chance with McCain than Obama, at least I hope. We had better take that breathing room to actually wake up and do something.
It much like having a home that is falling down around you. You had better fix that home if you intend to have one to protect you from the elements. We’re letting our home go, and expecting others to fix it. We don’t have the luxury of that much longer.
Pizcaj,
YOu are half way there – and I agree totally on the so called Republicans. The reason I am so upset with them is that I expected much from them. I feel betrayed by them.
For years of my life, I actually looked to Republicanism to guide this country in the right direction and to perserve our country. They have thrown that trust in the dirt.
But, we have to admit they could not have done it without the democrats.
We also have to admit there are a lot of very good people out here in this country and we can make it back – but we have to work together.
We don’t have to agree on everything. The only thing we have to agree is that we want this country better. If we do that and explore all avenues, it will work.
anonymous,
In my post #50 I was addressing Brian Sullivan’s post #41 in which he dismisses any tying of the current financial fiasco to Carter or Clinton as “plain nuts” and believes it’s all Bush’s, Republicans’ and conservatives’ fault, along with about everything else wrong with America and the world.
Most rational people realize this crisis in our basic governmental and financial structures has been brewing for a number of decades. They also know that while Bush has failed to insist that administration officials do their sworn constitutional duties, in quite a few areas (and one of several reasons for impeaching Bush), prominent Democrats such as Carter, Clinton, Franks, Pelosi, and Reid share a great deal of the blame as well. Even Reagan and Bush Sr. could have done more.
Suffice it to say I don’t believe that either of the major parties have the peoples’ best interests at heart. So we can call each other morons, idiots, Nazis, communists or whatever but I would say a pox on both parties except that I have that bad feeling in the back of my neck that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are far more dangerous to the survival of a constitutional Republic than McCain is. Not that he’s a lot better. The reason is that Obama in particular is an extreme liberal or socialist (not communists or Marxists) whose agenda would cause an economic, political, military, and industrial collapse of the US. McCain I believe is likely controlled by the neoconservatives who desire corporate welfare/socialism and want to export “democracy” to the rest of the world by force if necessary. And when I mean democracy I mean democratic socialism run by corporations. The US might as well name itself the US of Ford except it’s likely to be the US of Sony or something. What’s a good Chinese company name to put in there?
As I mentioned to pizcaj, I’m seriously considering voting 3rd party. And while I think if enough conservatives do so it will give the election to Obama, maybe a depression now would be better than putting it off for a decade when it would be far more severe, if not fatal. My hesitation is the type of judges Obama would appoint, particularly to the supreme Court.
While I could debate the matter, I will not do so with Brian, or BS as I referred to him as, due to his penchant for dishonesty, hubris, and ad hominem attacks. He’s a partisan demagogue and apologist for the Democrats and should stick to posting on the DailyKos, moveon.org, or the Huffington post. You might have noticed that several other posters have far harsher opinion of Major Professor Sullivan, PhD., USMC, and member of the NSA, CIA, and Military schools who chats with presidential candidates and high Vatican officials and who has stated that he doesn’t believe in gentlemanly conduct, claiming it’s unconstitutional.
Blackhat, the gist of your argument is that discussing Obama’s socialist and communist associations is pathetic and therefore not worthy of debate and then you want to discuss the bailouts. But this forum is about Obama’s past associations and what it portends about his political viewpoints, not about the bailouts, which I admit are good example of corporate welfare or socialism.
So my contention that you want to change the subject on this forum and criticize or bash Republicans is valid. By the way, I’m no fan of Bush or this administration but I believe what’s important on this particular forum is the question raised by the old English saw that you can tell the character of a man by the company he keeps.
Cliff, get off of it! Nobody cares. This is the United States, you can believe what you want. My life long union member father has been called a communist. I know for a fact he never was. He may have never even known any.
The CPUSA connection is relevant because philosophically CPUSA promoted liberated sex to a degree of perversion. That would dove-tail with Frank’s book. To confirm the importance of this connection, check out Robeson’s sexual preferences and escapades. I did. It fits.
Here is what I want to know. Did Stanley and Frank know each other in 1955-56? That would have been the Mercer Island period. How often did Frank travel to the West coast and was the Mercer Island area one of his destinations?
Jack:
Pointing out that ladytexan’s posts are predominately negative and pessimistic is not trashing, but a statement of opinion based on observation.
I’ve read her posts for a couple of months and when she’s not trashing China, Capitalism, businessmen, or immigrants, she’s chiding others for not being “christian” or tolerant enough.
As to your paranoia about me being Major Sullivan, you are an ever more entertaining example of irrationality. 
Re: Roberto Benitez: i’m sorry if you got the wrong impression. As i said before, i was merely commenting on the irony that while there is so much emphasis being placed on an associate of Obama’s being a communist, and speculation as to what extent that association has influenced his own ideas, the federal bailout of reckless financiers has actually happened—here in reality, rather than confined to the realm of possibility—and it bears a markedly fetid stench of socialism. Call me crazy, but i think that’s a strong point.
Regardless, as i’ve said elsewhere in these forums, i don’t buy it for a second that Obama’s association with ‘Frank’ “turned him communist.” Going to college in San Francisco, and keeping company with artists and intellectuals, i’ve known more than my share of people who identify as communists. They’re good people at heart, and i enjoy their company, however, that doesn’t mean that i share their ideology in the least. We agree to disagree, and that’s where the issue rests.
There’s an inherent fallacy in judging someone solely by the company they keep. Maybe that is an old English tradition, but so is judging someone by who their father was—and we all know how accurate that is…
Dear Master Hansen,
I have concluded that it is pointless to dispute the notions that arise from your paranoia. Like all conspiracy theorists, no logic, no facts can persuade nor dissuade you. If you want to believe that I assume a variety of pseudonyms, nothing I can write will convince you otherwise.
What astonishes me, however, if that you have come to believe that AIM and the despicable Mr. Kincaid are somehow in league with me. That really IS paranoid!
No more than I did before, do I believe you are departing this site permanently. One reason is that you have a need to present your feces obsessions to others, as in your blog above. Where else would you be able to do so except here? So, I am certain that you will be back in a few weeks, perhaps even sooner. Why am I so convinced of your return. Well, as it is written in Proverbs 26, verse 11:
LIKE A DOG RETURNING TO ITS VOMIT
IS THE FOOL WHO REPEATS HIS FOLLY.
ladytexan,
“We also have to admit there are a lot of very good people out here in this country and we can make it back – but we have to work together.
I agree, however, you’re not going to find people like that in the two major Party’s.
The Republican Party, though, is even more despicable because they drape themselves in the American flag and promise fiscal responsibility then stab us Conservatives in the back, time after time. This deceit on their part is what makes them even more dangerous than the Democrats. Bush the son has successfully completed what Bush the father had started; wipe out what was left of the Conservative element within the Party.
That’s why, to me, going Third Party is the only option left. I really feel that we have no choice in the matter.
Dear Mr. Benitez,
It’s extremely difficult to get you to face facts when you are unable to read with comprehension. What you claim that I wrote and what I actually stated are quite different. But that matters little to me. Was does concern me to a small extent is that you appear to be attracted to what has been described as “the politics of cultural despair.” One of my old professors, Fritz Stern, wrote a book with that title a number of decades ago. It might, just might, benefit you to read it. The book does make pretty clear where your kind of politics leads.
As to this nonsense: “While I could debate the matter, I will not do so with Brian, or BS as I referred to him as, due to his penchant for dishonesty, hubris, and ad hominem attacks. He’s a partisan demagogue and apologist for the Democrats and should stick to posting on the DailyKos, moveon.org, or the Huffington post. You might have noticed that several other posters have far harsher opinion of Major Professor Sullivan, PhD., USMC, and member of the NSA, CIA, and Military schools who chats with presidential candidates and high Vatican officials and who has stated that he doesn’t believe in gentlemanly conduct, claiming it’s unconstitutional.”
I feel a need – Lord knows why – to point out your misstatements in my regard: 1)I’m not a Democrat, nor have I ever been one: 2) I have never chatted with a high Vatican official nor have I ever claimed to. I have held conservations with Holy See officials, although they certainly weren’t very highly placed. I expect to again, when I’m in Rome next month. If you had lived in Rome when and for as long as I did, you could have done the same – provided you had anything interesting to say.
3) The same misstatements hold true for what you describe as my encounters with “presidential candidates.” Why don’t you go back to what I wrote in that regard? Then read it carefully. What I stated was true. I used to be employed by an organization that, among other assignments, sent its analysts to meet with members of the Senate and the House. From that, I think you can draw certain conclusions. 4) Finally, if you were to re-read what I wrote about the Constitution and its prohibition of titles, you should be able to understand what I wrote about the term “gentleman.” “Gentlemanly conduct,” however, is not an issue mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. However, I do think the concept is specious in a republican democracy and I reject it as a facade behind which liars and charlatans hide.
As far as I can tell, you are threatened by my words, jealous of my accomplishments and envious of my life experiences. Thus you distort what I have stated in those regards because of the miserable restrictions on your own existence and the pain that results therefrom. That is the very depth of folly. But none of that is any of my doing. YOU are responsible for your own failings, failures and disappointments. You can also do something about that. But you have to take the first major step in that direction and acknowledge who you are and what you have or have not done.
I don’t agree with some of the analysis that follows. However, it was written by a very knowledgeable former student of mine, who has worked at First Boston and at Goldman Sachs. He now lives in Tokyo where he observes and writes about the E. Asian economic scene. He is quite conservative although he has a very low opinion of the Bush administration and the Republican party. I offer this to you, despite my disagreements, because it seems to provide a better understanding of the present economic mess than many of you seem to have.
Re the financial crisis, I think that most Republicans with a
knowledge of economics or business, would not view the recent steps
taken by the administration as contrary to their principles. My guess
is that Thatcher, who was probably of all western leaders of the
post-war era I can think of the one who was both intellectually and
ideologically the most committed to economic liberalism, and endowed
with the brain power to understand what it meant, would have broadly
approved. Except for Cato Institute anarchists, I think that
Republicans, Democrats, European liberals, Social-Dems, and
Xtian-Dems, understands the special characteristics of systemic risks.
If an airline (Swissair) or car company (Chrysler, almost) goes
under, it’s good for the competition, as it allows the other players
to jack up prices. As banks are involved in complex webs of financial
transactions with their counterparts, if a big one goes belly up, so
do all the others throughout the planet. Moreover, as finance is
built on trust, a large financial collapse can only destroy confidence
in most other financial institutions; whereas when Swissair left its
clients stranded in Zurich, passengers flying from Seoul to Hong Kong
on Asiana probably couldn’t care less. Add to this the global
macroeconomic shock waves of a financial meltdown, and it becomes
clear that, to quote Thatcher, TINA (there is no alternative) to what
Treasury, the Fed, and the world’s key central banks did. The
Scandinavians de facto nationalized their banks in the 1990s after a
massive financial crisis, Britain took over a mortgage lender earlier
this year, and the Resolution Trust Co. took over the S&L;portfolios,
Credit Lyonnais was re-nationalized, and, at the end of the day, LTCB
(in Japan) had its “bad bank” de facto nationalized prior to its sale
to Ripplewood (“bad bank” is the term for the problem assets, loans or
other securities, of a bank. They are put in the “bad bank,” while the
rest of the business is sold or otherwise left to operate in the
private sector). Obviously, the key to this is to minimize moral
hazard. It’s fairly easy to do with equity holders (shareholders).
The shareholders of Bear Stears, Freddie and Fannie, Lehman, and AIG
lost either all or a big chunk of their assets. It’s tough to do this
with creditors without fueling a vicious spiral of panic in the
markets.
I don’t know enough about the technicalities of these issues to
pass judgment on the technical details of what the administration did,
except that I’m happy that Bush seems to have gone AWOL from decision
making. To give credit to the chaps at Treasury and the Fed,
handling these crises bears some similarity, with the enormous
difference that no one is getting killed, with military operations.
You must act fast. When Bear was tanking on a Friday, they had to
sort out the problem by Sunday evening US time (when Asian markets
open). So there’s a lot of “fog,” you don’t really know what the
assets and liabilities are, nor are the decision makers necessarily
familiar with the details of the problem. Add to this the “friction”
of sleep-deprived government officials, lawyers, bankers, and
accountants trying to ink a deal and the miscommunications arising
from missed and misunderstood phone calls, emails and SMS, it’s a
miracle things didn’t turn out worse.
If there’s a silver lining in this, besides the obvious one that
it hurts McCain, is that things have moved quickly, the sick have been
left to die or be acquired, as opposed to what happened in Japan where
worthless banks were put on life support for years.
An interesting development is how China has kept a low
profile. The Chinese central bank wasn’t among the banks said to have
joined the Fed in providing liquidity to the markets. It’s obviously
not that the Chinese want the system to collapse. Beijing is actually
more threatened than Washington by this. If the crisis gets worse,
members of Congress might lose their seats, the Republicans might lose
the White House, but you’re not going to have people rioting in the
streets and the legitimacy of the regime threatened. I think it shows
how careful, perhaps even timid, the CCP leaders are.
Pizcaj,
I agree third party is the way to go.
There are good people in both parties,though, I think. There are people who believe in this country and want it better, who would vote for a good person.
They just have to see that the parties have both hurt this country.
Also, I understand the idea many people have that a ‘vote for a third party’ is a vote for Obama. That’s the media and party talk and it is resonating. Actually, a vote not for a third party, is just more of the same.
When we get to the realization that our hope lies within our selves and our ability to make decisions on our own. Also, when we get to the realization that voting for the same people, party, etc., will get us the same results. Then is when we can begin to make a difference.
However the election goes this time, we are in for some very bad times – it doesn’t matter – Obama/McCain. As time goes by, McCain sounds so much like Obama.
I do admit to having those thoughts of McCain is slightly better than Obama, although I know deep down in my heart, it isn’t true. He just may buy us some time. See, even I am vulnerable to irrational, wishful thinking. ‘Click your heels together three times and———-’
Roberto Benitez,
I can understand your agonizing dilemma concerning voting 3rd Party; I was at that point not so long ago. I know a lot of Conservatives loath McCain but figure they’re being pragmatic in their intention of voting for him. I can certainly respect that.
I’ve been doing a lot of research on Pat Buchanan’s past statements concerning race, WW2, Hitler, Nazism, past associations, etc., since you and I touched on the topic last week.
Basically, I’ve covered the various charges made about him along with the statements he’s made that incited the criticism, including his recent book concerning WW2.
I have to admit, any trepidation you may have about the man concerning his inner thoughts is not unfounded, and has me interested in looking into his counter-arguments to the various charges.
Will let you know my conclusions about him.
@ladytexan: i agree with you wholeheartedly on the subject of the Republican party. As i believe i’ve quoted before, Barry Goldwater got it absolutely right on when he said (of the right wing), “Do not associate my name with anything you do. You are extremists, and you’ve hurt the Republican party much more than the Democrats have,” and said to Bob Dole in 1996, “We’re the new liberals of the Republican party. Can you imagine that?”
Your sentiments were that Bush Sr. was the beginning of the end of true conservatism in the Republican party. i would contend that it was Reagan. His apotheosis among conservatives notwithstanding, the more i read about the man, the more i realise the kind of man he actually was—wrap you in a fatherly embrace with one arm, while stabbing you in the back with the other. Reagan’s alignment with the Religious Right (Falwell, Robertson, etc.), and his near-total emphasis on personal wealth accretion, had the effect of refocusing the Republican party on religious issues, and encouraged not only irresponsible government spending, but also reckless corporate investment practices (through deregulation), and globalisation (though it wasn’t really called that at the time). As Reagan is so deified by the neoconservatives of today, his policies are used as blueprints without a second thought. There is a mistaken notion of “Reagan did it, so it must be good.”
Mr. Sullivan,
I’m not envious of or impressed by your alleged accomplishment, your name dropping, or your braggadocio. Rather I feel sorry for you. Quite frankly I believe you’ve lied about your education, associations, and expeeriences in order to further your admitted churlish psyops experiment. Had you been all that you claimed I would have liked to met and had a civil discussion with you. But from the get go you’ve shown a puerile hubristic churlishness. You’ve no one to blame but yourself if many of us think you’re a fraud, braggart, bully, and liar. So I suggest you grow up. Better yet, go to the DailyKos; Im sure they’d like your style.
pizcaj,
Despite my trepidations about Mr. Buchanan, I don’t discount everything he says. It’s that he seems to have a lot of baggage I have problems with. The same goes for Rep. Ron Paul. He’s right about a lot of problems but he comes across as a sour old man who wanted to be the stern schoolmaster-in-chief, not president.
My problem with voting 3rd party is that I don’t believe the Republic, or what’s left of it, can survive an Obama-Reid-Pelosi triumvirate. Yet I don’t trust the Republican Party to return to its principles. Like I said, the Republicans abandoned their 1994 contract With America and took out a contract on America. Maybe us bitter, Bible clinging, gun toting yahoos need to dust off the Declaration of Independence and take it to heart with a vengeance.
Dear Mr. Benitez,
You contradict yourself. You make it clear that if I had done what I claim, you would be impressed. Your comments in regard to what you think are lies I tell about myself, indicate that you would be envious – if what I write is true. But why you think I am inventing stories about myself astonishes me.
Look me up through a Google search. Get a copy of one of the books that lists Silver Star winners in the Vietnam era and see if I am listed.
Contact the Columbia U. alumni office and inquire about what degrees I hold from that institution. Get a copy of the Yale University catalogue for 1984-88 and look up the history courses I taught there. Do the same for the faculty at the Naval War College, 1988-91 and for the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University for 1991-96. Look my name up in the New York Times indices for the early 1990s. Make an inquiry through what is now Strategic Command about wheher I served as a consultant to the old Space Command in 1997-98. Get on to a library catalogue internet site and punch in my name as author. Look my name up in the annual list of published history articles. Get microfilm copies of Corriere della Sera and the London Telegraph for the period of early 1993 to mid-1994 and see what is written about me and the interviews I gave in June-July 1994. If you want, I’ll give you a letter to State Department so you can examine my passport files. Inquire through the Veteran’s Affairs Dept if I am a combat-wounded Vietnam vet. If you do all that and still have doubts about my identity and accomplishemnts, I’ll provide you with yet more ways to investigate if I am who I claim to be.
I am at a loss to understand what was churlish about my psyops experiement. It was designed to reveal the truth – and it did. If those I exposed have a low opinion of me, think what a far, far lower opinion I have of them – including you. And, I will add, why should I harbor the slightest concern for the opinions of the fools, ignoramuses, bigots (including you, in regard to the Catholic Church) and paranoid fantasists whom I exposed?
Finally, do you know what “churlish” means? Its basic meaning derives from one more class-based, Medieval hierarchical scale of social standing. You really don’t understand the ideas upon which our democratic republic was founded, do you? Despite your ignorance, we have neither “gentlemen” nor “churls” in the USA.
Roberto,
I’m surprised that Ron Paul seemed to be a sour old man. He never came across to me that way.
He seemed to be concerned, but actually he had ideas and that made him seem hopeful to me. I haven’t seen hope in a Presidential campaign in many years.
If we are going to fix things in this country, we must see that we cannot continue to do things as we have. That is all the so called two parties offer us – some kind of charade to keep us occupied or entertained, while our country keeps slipping away from us.
I realize that he had some very harsh truths, and it demanded that we actually cut loose from the chains of the parties and their business as usual.
As far as being a stern schoolteacher, I don’t see that. We need to open our eyes and minds and see the facts. Once we really got the message, then we could do the things needed to change the country. We would then demand the necessary actions, we would elect the people necessary.
The media did a good job on him, that’s for sure.
“… Make an inquiry through what is now Strategic Command about wheher I served as a consultant to the old Space Command in 1997-98 …”
You never did answer my question about that one, Major… why didn’t you complete the space defense strategy paper?
I think I understand now why you fight McCain, but I can’t understand why you would think an Obama win would be a good thing. Do you misunderstand the basic nature of socialism or misread the reasons for its failures in Britain, Sweden, Norway, Venezuela or any of the other places that have implemented it?
Roberto Benitez,
I understand perfectly well that you agree with a lot of what Buchanan says, but are leery of any ‘baggage’ he may carry.
Here are two controversial remarks he’s made, the first in the late 1970’s and the second in ‘89:
1) “Hitler was an individual of great courage, a soldier’s soldier… [and] a political organizer of the first rank.”
2) “Take a hard look at David Duke’s portfolio of winning issues and expropriate those not in conflict with GOP principles such as reverse discrimination against white folks.”
In various interviews I’ve watched on YouTube with Buchanan, when the subject of WW2, Hitler, etc. was being discussed, he always stated that Hitler was an anti-Semite who committed monstrous crimes against humanity, was a racist to the core, and that the United States and the Allies were right in defeating him, and that he got his just deserts in his Berlin bunker towards the end of the war. Buchanan’s contention with the quote above, was that it was a mistake to portray Hitler as some cartoonish, one-dimensional madman when, in fact, he fought in the trenches during WW1 and was able to organize a political party through sheer verbal skills, charisma, careful planning, etc.
The David Duke statement emanated from Buchanan’s disgust at the Republican Party’s lack of backbone and predictable ‘running for cover’ in the face of demonetization of Duke from the MSM during Duke’s presidential run. All this, despite the fact that the same MSM doesn’t hold former Klansman Democrat Senator Robert Byrd to the same scrutiny, which would have been a good counter-punch from the cowardly Republicans.
Three things about Buchanan that I don’t particularly admire was his attempt to convince Nixon to burn the Watergate tapes, his encouraging Nixon to have political enemy’s audited by the IRS (even though Buchanan campaigned to get rid of the IRS during his presidential bids), and his strong advocacy of the Vietnam conflict even though he never served both in wartime and peacetime.
Buchanan’s latest book ‘Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War’, is kind of disappointing in its naivete. The idea that WW2 might have been avoided had Poland agreed to giving up Danzig to Hitler, which was 95% German and mostly pro-Nazi, is to me, stretching it. The thought that a Nazi leader who would eventually set up extermination camps would be satisfied and co-exist in peace because of acquiring Danzig is preposterous, in my opinion.
Rightly so, Buchanan does bring out the fact that the same forces in the media who like to show endless documentaries concerning the Holocaust, seem to gloss over the fact that Stalin killed many more innocent civilians then Hitler ever did. Not that Hitler was any better than Stalin, but there does seem to be a double-standard on part of the MSM… I wonder why?
All in all, I’ve watched Buchanan on countless TV appearances over the last 20 years and have read a few of his books and many of his columns. He seems to be a most patriotic American with a great knowledge of the Constitution and calls both Party’s to task when he see’s it’s necessary.
Combine that with his ‘thick skin’ against media attacks, and I would vote for him over the two Bozo’s running now, and also over the disgrace that’s presently occupying the White House.
Any politician deemed by the ‘Establishment’ as potentially disrupting to the “Status Quo”, seems to be put under the microscope.
I don’t understand your dislike of Ron Paul’s persona. While not gifted with the greatest speaking voice or looks, a Ron Paul presidency along with clones of him in the Senate and Congress, would return this country to greatness.
As far as appearance, I would take Paul’s over the perpetual L’il Abner smile of Clinton and the bumbling persona of Bush any day.
Pizcaj,
I agree with you on much of that.
It is not wrong to admit that Hitler performed a minor miracle pulling Germany out of the dust the way he did.
We do have to admit, though, that had not a lot of the world’s businessmen and politicians, (ours included) wanted to make a profit off Germany’s strong build up, he could never have gotten provisioned for WWII.
No one likes to mention that American businesses liked him as a trading partner – perhaps some even into the war, if you can believe some of the reports.
One of my Stepmothers was German. She and her former husband were educated people, and lived in Nuremburg during the war. I didn’t know her well, but once I just couldn’t resist and I asked her what she now thought of Hitler.
She was sitting on my piano stool. She turned around to the piano, played a piece of classical music, turned back and said, “Hitler vas a vonderful man.”
The subject changed.
This was about 1965.
As for David Duke, certainly his affiliation with the KKK was wrong, but that doesn’t mean that every idea put forward was wrong.
How well we have forgotten that the Democratic Party in the South, was the party of the people of segregation. True much of the problem had as much to do with states’ rights and federal interference as it did segregation, but it was the Democrats who opposed it so rigorously.
People try to pretend they weren’t really Democrats – but they were – staunch FDR, Yellow Dog Democrats.
While we hear others constantly berated for something they have said, some affiliation, we seldom hear that about the Democratic Party – except for Sen. Byrd. That gets no traction, though.
I think I understand people’s dislike, for want of a better word, of Ron Paul. It is much as it is for Buchanan. The media did a real hatchet job on both of them.
Ron Paul had some real changes in mind. The changes made sense. Certainly, they weren’t business as usual, but we’ve tried business as usual. The media and the other two so called parties simply could not allow that to happen.
If people had actually listened to Ron Paul and given his ideas some thought, rather than following the lead of the media and calling him isolationist and really adult things – like ‘Kook’, they would have thought differently.
ladytexan,
You wrote - “No one likes to mention that American businesses liked him [Hitler] as a trading partner – perhaps some even into the war, if you can believe some of the reports.”
Same is going on today with our ‘free trade’ with Communist China. They provide the slave labor, we provide our patronage.
Regarding your Stepmother’s answer to your question… I wonder what percentage of post-war Germany held that same opinion?
You’re so right about Southern white Democrats resistance to civil rights back then – kind of reminds me of how the MSM gave Clinton a free pass after he commemorated Senator Fulbright of Arkansas as his mentor, even though Fulbright was a segregationist to the time of his death. When Trent Lott commemorated Strom Thurmond in a similar fashion a few years ago, he was forced to step down as Senate Majority Leader.
And then there’s Al Gore’s father, Senator Al Gore Sr., not voting for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The corrupt MSM we have and the double-standard they practice, is one of the many reasons for the continuing downfall of this country. Joseph Goebbels would have admired their finesse in doing this.
pizcaj,
Absolutely, we are building up China into the biggest power in the world, economically and militarily and no one wants to even concede that.
We will continue to wring out hands about awful Cuba, but somehow great big China is no threat.
I don’t know how many people in Germany held that belief. I’m assuming if you saw your country brought from nothing with crippling inflation into a strong, robust country, you might still want to have those thoughts.
The media is no longer a media, it is a propaganda tool for globalization.
Some, too many, people in this country have very short and selective memories – and – not a lot of knowledge of history.
Actually, if not for the fact that my Parents and Grandparents were very interested in politics, I would not have known much of what I do, and that’s not really much. We weren’t taught a lot in school, even then.
My Mother also was what some would call a ‘conspiracy nut’. She got all kinds of newspapers and booklets. I always called them her ‘subversive’ papers. They were just papers telling about news the media wasn’t putting out.
I wish I had them now. It would be fun to see how many of the predictions came true, wouldn’t it?
“… Joseph Goebbels would have admired their finesse …”
Finesse my butt! It is a the double-standard switch of anti-rationalism. Intellectuals lack the basis of a rational philosophy, so they destroy others’ rationality and claim all is relative.
These same relativistic, self-loathing, so-called intellectuals are the very ones who destroy the minds and idealism of our children when they are at the prime point in their lives to develop reason and a philosophical foundation; when they reach the universities where these husks of humanity rule.
Look no further than the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles for the reasons Germans supported Hitler.
The French and British insisted on punitive reparations from the Germans for WWI. The Germans responded by deflating their currency so they paid the French and British with ever less valuable cash. They were willing to suffer the economic devastation of hyper-inflation and unemployment just to protest the heavy-handedness of the Allies in the terms of Versailles.
Hitler came along and put his thumb in the Allies’ eyes by re-militarizing the buffer zone between Germany and France in blatant violation of the treaty. Germans cheered that someone had to balls to stand up and flip the Allies the bird. Chamberlain, instead of realizing the mistakes and moving to correct them simply took Hitler’s word that was all he would do.
Hitler, encouraged by the appeasement, proceeded to rebuild his military, again in blatant violation of Versailles. Again Chamberlain and the Allies appeased him and looked the other way and encouraged their businessmen to work with Hitler to rebuild the German economy and make a buck in the process.
The constant appeasement and moral flabbiness brought on WWII. Germans loved Hitler because he restored their nationalistic and racial pride and vividly demonstrated the moral bankruptcy of the enemy.
This is exactly the model Saddam was following. He and the Syrian Baathists were/are among Hitler’s greatest worshipers. This is the model the Iranian president is now following.
The moral flabbiness and altruistic appeasement of the West is still there as well.
John Galt,
I certainly agree with your assessment of the minds of the average German citizen during pre-WW2 Germany. The Germans did get an overly harsh punitive rap under the Versailles Treaty and Hitler certainly relieved their understandable frustrations during the 1930’s.
I also feel that Hitler’s desire for Poland to hand over Danzig was justifiable considering that its population was 95% German and that their hearts were with the Third Reich, anyway. However, I doubt the handover would have pacified Hitler’s megalomania as Buchanan contends it might have.
My curiosity is with the German Post-War opinion of Hitler’s legacy. What percentage of Germans look at him in a favorable light?…and why?
Also, your opinion of the negative effects that intellectuals have on our youth is accurate, which is why these poor souls today end up jaded at such a young age. Many of these intellectuals seem to share a similar tic in their collective brains concerning their resistance to diversity of thought.
However, as far as the MSM, I feel there’s a deliberate brainwashing campaign being conducted by them with the collusion of the globalists of both major Party’s in the government.
pizcaj,
I was well aware that Buchanan’s views on Hitler and David duke were taken out of context. It’s a favorite tactic of the media as I’m sure you’re aware of.
But like you I feel that his views on WWII are misplaced. I agree that Hitler wouldn’t have been satisfied just with the reunification of the old German empire. He made his plans quite clear in his book Mein Kampf. Not only did he plan to eventually attack England, but he also planned to attack the US and from the beginning of the war made plans to develop weapons that could reach the US.
Yet I have to agree with Buchanan’s views that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles demanded by France were unduly harsh on Germany. Furthermore, most people have little understanding of how and why WWI started and why it’s important to our problems we face with militant Islam. Most people don’t recognize the name of Gavrilo Princip despite the fact that he’s arguably the most influential man of the 20th century. It was Princip and his fellow conspirators who in their desire to free Europe from the last of the Islamic Caliphate started a conflagration that led to 2 world wars; the fall of the Hohenzollern, Habsburg, and Romanov dynasties; the rise of the Soviet Union; the dividing of the Ottoman Empire and the conflicts we now have in the Mideast; and the rise of America as an interventionist power.
The reason for the double standard in the MSM is that they don’t want to admit how much alike Nazi fascism and Marxist communism were; that they killed far more people than all previous wars combined along with the inflated number of deaths from the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Witch Trials; all of with the liberal MSM wants and needs to blame on conservatism and/or capitalism.
By the way, Ron Paul’s looks don’t bother me at all. I hope I will be doing as well when I reach his age. But he just came across as a whiner in the debates. I liked many of his ideas but he’s an absolutist which I believe is impractical and unworkable in the situation we now face. And yes, I believe that what is being proposed is a form of socialism.
Yes, the treaties are what caused the situation in Germany and Hitler became their hero. I do understand their thinking there.
Commerce with other countries, including ours, is one of the things that allowed him to do that.
I’m thinking these businessmen and our government were well aware of his plans, but money trumps all – still does.
I wish I had been mature enough to have discussed this with my, then, Stepmother, but I was young. She was formidable, to say the least and we just changed the subject.
When I hear things said about Ron Paul, I hear words, negative words, but just words. Most often it’s words put out there by the media.
I don’t hear that his statement of the problems we face are in error. I don’t hear that the solutions won’t work, or why – just that they are ‘isolationist’ or some tag put there by the media.
Certainly there is room for disagreement, but to simply dismiss any solution with tags attached by the media and other politicians without discussing why the solutions won’t work, doesn’t help us in this country.
He has spoken some harsh truths, tough to hear, that’s a fact. They will be even tougher to solve. They can’t, however, be solved by the same old- same old and that’s what we get from the other politicians.
Perhaps he made the mistake of speaking to us, not as children like the media and other politicians do, and spoke to us as adults.
He offered solutions – different solutions and since the old ones haven’t worked, I would think they were worthy of at least thinking about.
So he was rejected, without much thought, in favor of great solutions like:
Change – now I’m thinking ‘change’ has been a platform in every elections since this country began. But change in what way? More government, more everything to everyone, etc. In other words, business as usual.
All God’s children – We have 20-50 million people in this country illegally. They are destroying this country from within financially, and many working citizens at the same time. The solution – let’s just give them a piece of paper, and all’s well. So why don’t we solve all our crime by just pardoning all criminals. That way we have no crime problem.
Chest beating for the war – This war is breaking this country, it is harming our good will in the world. We no longer have the money to buy good will – with China now as our financier. But, we are going to continue to pretend that this war is being fought to keep us safe – ‘fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here’. Be sure and don’t let people dwell on the fact that our borders are open, inviting, and known to the entire world. If they have a desire to be ‘here’ – they are already are. If they desire to bring more – nothing stopping them.
So, let’s don’t talk about the tough problems, let’s don’t discuss actually having to ‘do’ something. Let’s listen to the silly spin, vote our party – and hope some miracle will occur and we won’t self destruct.
‘fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here’
I prefer to think of the Iraq war in terms of putting other tinpot tyrants and “half-assed nations” (as Goldwater called them) on notice that “you screw with the bull, you get the horn!”
Call it chest beating if you like, but the appeasement and “tolerance” being advocated is nothing more than compromise of morals, principle, and national security.
How many Russian diplomats have been kidnapped or killed in the last 20 years? What happened to the last group of terrorists and their families who kidnapped and killed a Russian diplomat?
Call it chest beating if you like, but the appeasement and “tolerance” being advocated is nothing more than compromise of morals, principle, and national security.
It tells adversaries that we are not to be taken seriously: that we will always seek compromise rather than confrontation. WRONG MESSAGE!
No one said anything about ‘appeasement and tolerance’.
Where did that come in? That’s political talk.
While we are proclaiming to the world just how bad we are, how tough we are, the world has learned -
We are broke – in debt for this war to China and others.
Our financial institutions are crumbling.
We don’t manufacture our very necessities – even some of our military needs. WE are dependent, for the most part, on a communist country.
We have no energy policy – except to continue to allow oil companies to gouge us.
Obama and McCain seem to be the best this country has to offer as executives – now what is that telling the world.
Our borders are open, we have been invaded by 20-50 million foreigners. I’m thinking that sends a message to our ‘adversaries’, don’t you think?
Maybe ‘ya’ll come on in, ya’ hear’.
If you want your adversaries to respect you and fear you, you need to actually be strong. We are not strong.
We are ever so vulnerable in ever so many respects.
The people of the world are not as ignorant as the politicians try to portray them, and as many would like to believe. They have sense enough to know that a country that is broke, has no ability to provide for itself – especially oil and military goods, is full of foreigners, is not that much of a threat.
Yes, chest beating is what it is. We need to be able to deal from a position of strength, not bombast and not on borrowed money.
That fact is not lost on the rest of the world, and not our ‘adversaries’ whomever our polticians are telling us they are this decade.
The US is hardly poor, ladytexan. Our annual Gross Domestic Production (i.e., how much WEALTH we create yearly) is $12 Trillion.
China’s GDP is around half that.
The credit mess involves around $1 – $1.5 Trillion. The deficit is another matter, around $10 Trillion, but that’s like saying my annual income is $110K and the mortgage on my house is $100K.
You really should inform yourself with facts rather than espousing feelings.
John,
Forgive me, but that’s wishful thinking.
That reminds me of the attacks I was getting just a year ago if I said the economy was in trouble.
My goodness, ‘we have low unemployment rate’ (in the illegal community)
‘we have more homeowners today than ever’ (right!!),
‘retail sales are up’ (merchandise from China and it produces good paying jobs – ‘welcome to Wal Mart’,
‘my goodness our forefathers spent 99.9% of their income on food, ours is cheap’ (My history was sadly lacking. I did not know that our forefathers visited the Safeway for all their food needs.)
All the Econ101 rhetoric that wasn’t true and doesn’t have much to do with the problems in this country.
You know I can fix the economy and unemployment problem of many countries in the world. Let me just send them our statisticians. By the time, they make ‘seasonal ajustments’, leave out those unessentials like food and energy, etc. etc.,they will look ever so good on paper.
Then we have to send them a legion of media people, and ‘experts’ to tell the people of that country that despite the fact they can’t afford to pay their taxes, they are having real problems buying food, they can’t afford healthcare, crime is destroying their neighborhoods, their country has been invaded by illegals, their family and friends are out of a job, everything is wonderful.
They can tell them if they are having problems, it’s because they are not educated enough, or just not smart enough to know when they are well off. Kinda like ‘you’re still breathing, aren’t you’?
Ladytexan,
Sooner or later Western Civilization, and particularly the US, was bound to wind up in a full blown war with Islam. Europe is well on its way to accepting Dhimmitude under Mar al-Islam. I doubt those who advocate retreat and appeasement, and that’s what it is even if they don’t use those specific words, have much knowledge of the religious/military/political nature of Islam or its history vis-à-vis the West.
That Bush and company chose the wrong time, place, and manner to confront Islam goes without saying. Once he decided war was the only answer, he ignored his top generals, went in with far too few troops, and mismanaged it until the surge. Worse yet, it was designed to profit a few favored companies, starting with subsidiaries of Halliburton. The political/corporate corruption was a harbinger of the crisis we’re now facing.
But if you think it’s all chest beating to prove how “bad” we are, vote for Obama, buy a prayer rug, and find the direction to Mecca. Just as many like Pat Buchanan didn’t believe Hitler’s Mein Kampf, so most liberal don’t believe what prominent Arabs and Muslims preach and write about their destiny in the world.
However, I will agree that we are own worst enemy. We have bought a pot of porridge; the socialist agenda with cradle to the grave federal benefits, open borders, aggressive secularism, and internationalism. As Benjamin Franklin said, those who would trade essential liberties for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.
I for one believe we will get the president and Congress we so richly deserve. Whether or not the Republic will survive is another matter.
“Forgive me, but that’s wishful thinking.”
No those are facts. If you choose to “pooh pooh” such facts and choose instead to try to cause everyone around you to feel as badly about everything as you do, there’s probably no amount of facts or reason that will change your mind.
Why should you beg me to forgive you for making yourself so miserable? I have nothing to do with that: I only attempt to show there are more reasons to be optimistic.
I am not blind: I have not said that we do not have problems. I do say those problems are neither insurmountable or reason to be so negative as you.
I choose to be grateful and proud of the fact that I was fortunate enough to have been born in what is still the freest, most prosperous and productive nation on the planet.
I also choose to work at disproving pessimistic populist propaganda such as yours by using facts and reason.
Roberto:
These are the guys we have to thank for the success of the surge in Iraq:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Keane
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nagl
Roberto:
These are the guys we have to thank for the success of the surge in Iraq (Kismet won’t let me post the wiki links, so search for them on wikipedia):
Jack_Keane
Convinced Bush to stand up to the Pentagon, including generals Odom and Casey and adopt a different approach rather than looking for a way to withdraw
David_Petraeus
Developed the counterinsurgency doctrine and re-trained officers to use the new doctrine.
John_Nagl
Used lessons learned from his study of counterinsurgency in Vietnam and Malaya to help Petraeus develop the COIN manual and training.
If things had been left to George Casey and Bill Odom, we would have had another disaster exactly like Vietnam.
Roberto Benitez,
“I for one believe we will get the president and Congress we so richly deserve. Whether or not the Republic will survive is another matter.”
Your statement is verified when I walk along the streets, in a mall, etc., and see how the average American carries themselves. You can read shallowness and immaturity from a mile away. Compare that to how average Americans projected themselves from 30, 40, 50 years ago and you can understand why we have the weasels we have in government these days.
Even worse than the war profiteering in Iraq, is the way that our nation has become more divided because of its unnecessary longevity. I remember the almost non-existent criticism Bush received from the Left and from the MSM when he sent our troops into Afghanistan to ‘go after Bin Laden’. However, as time went by, and the public sensed a half-assed, Washington-led operation going on, with little results, the anger level increased.
Personally, I think this was deliberate on Bush’s part, in order to divide a nation that was pretty much united after 9/11, in order to help usher in his New World Order policies more easily.
Galt, the “credit mess”, is just one aspect of the derivatives bubble.
It is much, much, much larger and is the source of this ongoing crash.
John Galt,
Thanks for the additional information on who was behind the successes of the surge. It’s important to know who the heroes are. Most of us know of Gen. Petraeus but not the others you point out.
I believe that whether or not one believes that starting this war was a good idea, we’re now in it and need to end it successfully. Retreat and appeasement would be as you put it a disaster like Vietnam, but worse.
By the way, I believe that we were betrayed in Vietnam by the MSM backed by the liberal Democrat left. We didn’t loose on the battlefield but in the press. What makes it particularly galling is the fact that Pres. Johnson and Sec. Def. McNamara believed the war was unwinnable but continued it because LBJ was fearful of being impeached if he gave up.
What our leaders haven’t learned is that if you want to go to war, do so with the intention of winning it relatively quickly and decisively and forget about graduated response.
Bush enjoyed about 2 months of support after 9/11/01 from the left in his 7+ years in office. For the 9 months prior to that and the 7 years after, the left constantly mocked, smeared, and denigrated him regardless of what he did. Bush Derangement Syndrome has reigned in the left and especially the media with only that 2 month reprieve.
While I am critical of many of his decisions, the guy does not and never did deserve the disrespect he’s gotten. The division in the nation is a product of that disrespect, as typified by the bumper stickers that read “He’s not MY President!”
and you, cliff, once WORKED FOR AND WITH a known drug and gun peddler that lied to congress. oh, and those weapons… some of them went to… IRAN. and we are not talking about pea-shooters. we are talking about TOW and HAWK missiles, and this whole stupid botched operation helped to make hostage-taking a growth industry.
that’s some nice company you keep, eh?
and you really should not be talking about drug use.
how many lives were ruined by your FORMER ASSOCIATE’S international drug peddling operation?
your glass house is, in reality, a glass sieve.
and you, as always, fail to include anything that does not bolster your tissue-thin allegations.
why did russia enter georgia?
what event occurred just prior to that?
shiny side out, cliff… shiny side out…