Archive for the ‘Presidential Race’ Category
Labor Union Perspective
By Thomas E. Brewton
As the proposed trade agreement with Colombia reveals, labor unions are organizations of self-centered greed, which disingenuously cloak themselves with pretense of God, country, and mom's apple pie.
President Bush, by calling for Congressional approval of the trade agreement with Colombia, is compelling liberal-progressives to choose between the high-flown, one-world internationalism to which they give lip service and kow-towing to organized labor.
Columnist Robert D. Novak described it this way in his April 4th article:
President Bush will send Congress a trade agreement next week forcing Democrats to make an unpleasant choice. Will they do the bidding of organized labor and reject a pact negotiated more than a year and a half ago with the country's strongest ally and best customer in South America?
…But to forget about a vote this year, as Pelosi wants, …would humiliate Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, a free-trader and a bulwark against the spreading influence in Latin America of Venezuela's leftist strongman, President Hugo Chávez.
Our liberal-progressive school system instructs callow youth that labor unions are agents of good and right. The facts are quite different.
The president of the United Auto Workers union has implicitly acknowledged the stark truth: industrial unions are killing American manufacturing jobs. Unions’ salvation, he says, must come from ukases promulgated by the commissars of a new socialistic, Democratic administration.
In a June 13, 2006, article by Jefrey McCracken, the Wall Street Journal reported:
United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger, acknowledging that his union confronts the toughest challenges in its 71-year history, told delegates to the UAW’s leadership convention that solutions to problems such as rising health-care costs or the rash of auto suppliers filing bankruptcy-law protection must come largely through the political process.
Union leaders expect a Democrat-socialist to win the presidency, and they expect a payoff via protectionist legislation that will reduce business profits, throwing non-union workers out of jobs and augmenting inflation, to the cost of the vast majority of citizens who are non-union members of the labor force.
Posted in Senator Obama and the Transformation of Human Nature
By Thomas E. Brewton
Believing apparently that specifics are not necessary, Senator Obama promises us that his election will bring us all together in one happy family via a miraculous transformation of society and its citizens.
Earthly perfection of human nature and human society, here and now, is what Senator Obama is promising us. This is his implicit message when tells us that he can, as President, bring us all together and move us beyond strife, aggression, and wars.
One thing we can state categorically in that regard is that what Senator Obama promises is emphatically, irreconcilably opposed to the Judeo-Christian foundations of Western Civilization. Parenthetically, the Senator's secular and socialistic mind-set may explain in part why he saw no problem with the unchristian hatred preached by his minister, the Rev. Wright.
Senator Obama is not necessarily painting himself as the Second Messiah who will personally effect the transformation. Rather, as a good socialist-progressive-liberal, he expects that structural changes in the political state will do the necessary work.
Such structural changes will include higher taxes, especially on capital gains which fuel business innovation and more efficient production, massive increases in Federal welfare-state spending programs, and crushing inflation, along with extensive increases in regulation of personal and business conduct (including stronger affirmative-action measures).
As the German Empire's Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck told the Reichstag in the 1880s, he was instituting the world's first welfare state in order to gain total control over the German people. Those who are dependent upon the political state for their benefits, he observed, can be herded like cattle.
In contrast, in the Old Testament, King Solomon tells us:
The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:
"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 1:1-3)
I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. (Ecclesiastes 1:12-14)
Obama’s Excremental Economics
By Thomas E. Brewton
As prolongation of the 1930s Depression and stagflation in the 1970s demonstrated, Senator Obama’s announced policies are a prescription for economic disaster.
Keynesian economic doctrine, not under that name, but in substance, is back in the news in a truly menacing way. Senator Obama proposes to repeat the policies of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal that turned an ordinary two-year recession into an eight-year disaster, with unemployment rates continuously in the high teens.
The key elements of Senator Obama’s proposed economic policies, as in the New Deal and the stagflation of the 1970s, are much higher taxes, along with a pervasive increase of business regulations and price controls in healthcare and energy (which sharply depress business activity and employment rates), full-frontal embrace of labor unions (which will push up wages and benefits to levels deterring profitable expansion of industrial production), and massive new government deficit spending (which will accelerate the already dangerously high rate of inflation and devaluation of the dollar). Carried out as he proposes, Senator Obama’s polices will lead us again into the swamp of stagflation.
The basic thrust of Keynesianism is the belief that control of the economy must be collectivized at the Federal level, because private business is incapable of providing full employment, and because the proper goal of economic policy must be thwarting greedy businessmen to attain so-called social justice: equal distribution of income and wealth, without regard to merit, capability, or hard work.
Not surprisingly the New York Times editorial board and the Times’s propagandist Paul Krugman are prominent Keynesian enthusiasts.
Senator Obama’s Friends
By Thomas E. Brewton
How indicative of his character and beliefs is Senator Obama's having launched one of his political campaigns at the home of his friends Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers?
Who are Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers? And why would Senator Obama wish to associate his political beliefs with those of Dohrn and Ayers?
Might his friendship with these Weatherman terrorists of the 1960s and 70s be a clue to the voting record that led National Journal to rate Mr. Obama the most liberal member of the Senate?
The New York Times reported on September 11, 2001, ironically, the day the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were bombed:
"Life With the Weathermen: No Regrets for a Love of Explosives"
By Dinitia Smith"I don't regret setting bombs," Bill Ayers said. "I feel we didn't do enough." Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago. The long curly locks in his Wanted poster are shorn, though he wears earrings. He still has tattooed on his neck the rainbow-and-lightning Weathermen logo that appeared on letters taking responsibility for bombings.
Read the rest of this entry »
Is Obama a Muslim? Probably Yes.
By Alan Caruba
I really don’t care how many times Barack Hussein Obama says he is a Christian. I believe he is a Muslim and I believe he chosen to hide his true faith in the name of the jihad being waged by the militant branch of Islam through acts of terror and intimidation and the world.
Few in the West know of the doctrine of “taqiyya”, the concealment of a Muslim’s true faith. As Robert Spencer explained it in his book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)”, there are “two enduring Islamic principles: the permissibility of political assassination for the honor of the Prophet and his religion and the allowance for the practice of deception in wartime.” Indeed, Mohammed is quoted as saying that, “War is deceit.”
Jihad is war. It is a holy war. It is central to the practice of Islam.
To put the practice of deception in its historic context, Spencer notes that, “When Shiite Muslims were persecuted by Sunnis, they developed the doctrine of taqiyya, or concealment: They could lie about what they believed, denying aspects of their faith that were offensive to Sunnis. This practice is sanctioned by the Koran warning Muslims that those who forsake Islam will be consigned to Hell—except those forced to do so, but who remain true Muslims inwardly.”
In Iraq, Sunni Muslims, fearful of being attacked by the Shiite majority, shared information about how to make themselves and their homes appear to be Shiite. The practice of taqiyya was applied and with good reason. It is worth noting that Sunnis are the majority sect of Islam, whereas Shiites are concentrated in Iraq and in neighboring Iran.
This is why Obama’s profession of faith as a Christian permits the concealment of being a Muslim in his heart. What he does not deny is that he was raised and educated as a Muslim, attended a Muslim school for four years while living in Indonesia. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the school taught Wahhabism, a fundamentalist version of Islam that has it roots in Saudi Arabia. At age 10, his twice-divorced mother moved to Hawaii.
If he were truly an apostate, a Muslim who had renounced Islam, the penalty for that is death.
Illegal Aliens: Hillary’s Flip-Flops Border on Insanity
By Jim Kouri
Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton finally agreed to appear on the highly-rated Fox News show The O’Reilly Factor. Her interview, which was taped earlier this
week while she was campaigning in South Bend, Indiana, was broadcast on The Factor over two consecutive nights.
On Thursday night, part two of “Hillary in the No Spin Zone” aired, and she was asked questions on the topics of foreign policy, the War on Terror, and illegal immigration. When Bill O’Reilly turned to the immigration debate, he asked, “Will you shut down sanctuary cities?” Hillary responded, “No, I will not.”
According to a new report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the illegal immigrant population within the United States currently exceeds 13 million, an estimate that has almost doubled since 2000. Given this increasing trend, Hillary’s response should be frightening to American families, who are forced to live with frequent criminal activity committed by illegals in sanctuary cities. Even during the Senate debate of the Grand Amnesty bill last year, Senator Clinton voted against the Coleman Amendment which would have banned sanctuary cities (Roll Call 177).
“It is an outrage that Hillary Clinton is running to become President of the United States, yet she is openly admitting that she will not enforce America’s laws,” said Eagle Forum Executive Director Jessica Echard.
“Sanctuary city policies put all Americans in danger, and as an elected official, Hillary Clinton is well aware of that fact. Do we really want to elect someone who will enable criminal aliens to roam our streets?” she added
Last August, several African-American college-bound teenagers were brutally murdered while listening to music in a playground in Newark, New Jersey, one of many US sanctuary cities. Although Newark is no stranger to violence, the perpetrator was an illegal alien from Peru, who had been previously charged with raping a 5-year-old girl, but was released despite his obvious illegal presence in this country.
“If Hillary Clinton will not enforce the law against sanctuary cities, why should we believe she will enforce any other immigration laws or build the fence?” stated Echard. “She will simply continue the Bush open border policies which she pretends to condemn and that have allowed our illegal immigration population to nearly double since 2000.”
Stars, Stripes and Scoundrels: Dems Use Fag as Fig Leaf
By Daniel Clark
If it’s true that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, then that explains the tendency of liberal Democrats to seek shelter behind the Stars and Stripes.
When Barack Obama tried to distance himself from the anti-American ramblings of his spiritual advisor, Jeremiah Wright, he enlisted the help of not one, but eight American flags. He must have figured that, with all those banners standing behind him, he’d sound patriotic no matter what he actually said. That was apparently an accurate assessment, in fact, as few accounts of his widely lauded speech have bothered to note that he indirectly blamed Wright’s hatred of America on America itself.
This is the same Sen. Obama, remember, who had once worn an American flag pin on his lapel, but removed it in protest of the war in Iraq. The war continues, and so does Obama’s protesting it; nevertheless, he has changed his mind and embraced the American flag, now that he needs it as a security blanket.
Bill Clinton affected a similar reconciliation back in 1994. When he’d been a student at Oxford during the Vietnam War, he had protested against his own country on foreign soil. He had by that point been drafted, but had received an unprecedented deferment in exchange for an insincere promise to join the ROTC. In a letter justifying his duplicity to his ROTC director, Col. Eugene Holmes, Clinton told the former POW and Bataan Death March survivor about his “loathing the military.” Solipsistically unaware of the insult he was delivering, he wrote in closing, “Merry Christmas.”
While Clinton was running for president in 1992, Col. Holmes warned of “the imminent danger to our country of a draft-dodger becoming Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States.” In an affidavit detailing the ways in which Clinton had misled him, the colonel explained, “These actions cause me to question both his patriotism and his integrity.”
Statement by John McCain on President Carter’s Plans to Meet with Hamas
ARLINGTON, Va. April 14 /Standard Newswire/ – U.S. Senator John McCain today issued the following statement on former President Carter's plans to meet with Hamas:
"It is a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader to meet with a terrorist organization like Hamas. Engaged in a campaign that deliberately targets innocent Israeli civilians, Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. President Carter is wrong to meet with Hamas, a terrorist group that has also killed innocent Americans.
"The very idea that a former President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief would meet with a terrorist organization demands a clear stance from all presidential candidates. Refusing to take a stand, as Senator Obama has done, is not the strong leadership we need today. If Senator Obama is not decisive enough to condemn former President Carter, how can he be strong enough to deal with the threat they pose to America and to our allies?"
Contact: Press Office, 703-650-5550; www.JohnMcCain.com
Sympathy for the She-Devil?
By Thomas Lindaman
The recent stories about Hillary Clinton’s campaign spending money like a lonely male Lotto winner at a strip club have given us a new look at the woman who would be President. We already suspected that she wasn’t ready to run the country, but the ways she’s spent campaign cash have pretty much solidified it. Seriously, $1300 for Dunkin’ Donuts? That’s what Michael Moore spends for his pre-pre-pre-post-pre-post-post-pre-post-post-pre-post-pre-mid-morning brunch, for the love of Pete!
Yet, I can’t help but feel sorry for Hillary at this point. You read that right, folks. I feel sorry for Hillary Clinton. And, surprisingly, the straitjacket is very comfortable. And the men in the nice white coats bring me all sorts of wonderful drugs!
Seriously, I’m wincing as each new story about Hillary and her campaign comes out because it’s becoming clear that her campaign is the worst one a Democratic candidate has ever run without hiring Bob Shrum. Overspending, bad post-Super Tuesday strategy, awkward lines about “35 years of experience” and “change you can Xerox,” and Bill’s ill-advised and ham-handed forays into racial politics notwithstanding, Hillary seems to have counted on being granted the Democratic nomination by virtue of…well, being Hillary.
Part of this expectation stems from the fact Hillary has never had to run a campaign in a competitive race until now. In 2000, her chief competition, Rudy Giuliani, dropped out due to cancer, leaving Rick Lazio to pick up the pieces, but not the Senate seat. Then in 2006, the Republican who ran against Hillary had less of a chance than John McCain does of being caught in a sex scandal. Okay, bad example, but Hillary has been pretty much untouchable in her Senate races. Now, with Barack Obama making waves like Michael Moore doing a cannonball into the ocean, Hillary’s finding out the hard way that she’s not nearly as untouchable as she has been.
Time For A New Generation?
By Frank Hyland
Every generation firmly believes that, because they’ve got all the answers, it’s time for their predecessors, their elders to step aside and out of the way to make way for them. All the calls for "Change" tell us that once again those in their 20s, 30s and 40s are panting to take over the lead from the "old codgers" who are making all the mistakes. Many of the youngsters, though, display a words-deeds dichotomy that speaks loudly that they can use a bit more "seasoning" before they take the reins.
Added to the daily barrage of calls for "Change," we’re now told that it is once again time for a new generation to assume the leadership of the United States. We are told this by no less an authority on young people than Senator Edward Kennedy, age 76. Senator Kennedy, for those not intimately familiar with him, is also a paramount example of truthfulness, marital fidelity, and non-partisan politics. Nevertheless, it is always helpful to look at the day-to-day behaviors of the younger generation to see if there are clues there, clues to how they would act in the Oval Office. The younger generation clamoring for change and to take the reins of power, like all other generations before it, needs to be willing to look in the mirror and to be honest with itself as to the image it sees there.
There is a way to at least get an indication of how Young Folks would act in the Oval Office, The US Senate, or the House of Representatives: Their predecessors’ behavior in office has been very similar, identical actually, to the way they acted before being elected. In most cases, to be fair, the behavior in office has been honorable (or at least the Mainstream Media hasn’t yet uncovered the truth). It’s the behavior of Young Folks in society at large that can be alarming.
Essentially, we must be able to trust the word of our public officials. Well, what we used to call wedding "vows" seems to have taken on a new meaning, as divorce rates soar. Promissory notes for bank loans take a back seat more and more as bankruptcy rates soar. Realtors must wonder at night how many of the "15-year" mortgages these days will be honored longer than 15 weeks; moving out in the middle of the night and bringing in hogs to take your place, because you’re upset at being foreclosed, may become even more of a trend. The horror stories about abuse of others, children and adults, are made more horrible by the growing number of police officers, priests and ministers, counselors, health professionals and teachers who are convicted of perpetrating the crimes.