Always Think Ahead

Franz Reichelt presents an interpretive dance on the Obama economic plan:

Hatchet, Ax, and Saw

Our future as told through Canadian rock:

God Must Have A Sense Of Humor

i⋅ro⋅ny [ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-]
–noun, plural -nies.
1: Indianapolis - Lines were long and tempers flared Wednesday not to vote but to get paid for canvassing for Barack Obama. Several hundred people are still waiting to get their pay for last-minute campaigning. Police were called to the Obama campaign office on North Meridian Street downtown to control the crowd.

The line was long and the crowd was angry at times.

"I want my money today! It's my money. I want it right now!" yelled one former campaign worker. . .

Eventually people did start getting paid, but some said they were missing hours and told to fill in paperwork making their claim and that eventually they would get a check in the mail . . .

"It should have been $480. It's $230," said Imani Sankofa.

"They gave us $10 an hour. So we added it. I added up all the hours so it was supposed to be at least $120. All I get is $90," said Charles Martin.

"I worked nine hours a day for 4 days and got paid half of what I should have earned," said Randall Waldon.

Some people weren't satisfied with filling out a claim form for money they felt was still due to them. . .

You Want To Make History? Let's Talk About History

Considering Constitutional scholar and Law Professor Barack Obama's regret over the restrictions placed on the government by the Constitution (a legal document) and its failure (or as I like to put it, "runaway success") to guarantee a right to your neighbor's property, I thought that maybe we should consider what the founders thought on the subject:

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
-Benjamin Franklin

I suppose that means the Republic has been on the down slope since the ratification of the 16th Amendment (which may not be legal). I guess Barry's going to make America great again by destroying the Republic and calling Ben Franklin an old fool.

“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816

So the author of the Declaration of Independence saw redistribution of wealth as a violation of every man's right to the fruits of his own labor. Oh well, what did he know about freedom and tyranny?

“A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
-Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

So President Jefferson would see Barry Obama as unwise, unfrugal, and an advocate of "bad government". Remember though, Barry was President of the Harvard Law Review. He surely knows more about good government than Thomas Jefferson.

“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”
-Thomas Jefferson

Not according to the Warren Court which wasn't that radical according to Barry.

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”
-John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787

Harsh words for Barry from another Founding Father. Does Barry seek anarchy and tyranny? All he wants to do is render the legal document that defines the government of our union null, void, and meaningless. Its not like he launched his political career in the house of an avowed anarchist or anything like that.

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
-James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)

Does that put "spreading the wealth" out of the question? What did Madison know anyway. He's only the Father of our Constitution.

“…[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
-James Madison

So whenever someone talks about America's duty to help out the less fortunate in America (those richer than only 90% of the rest of the world) it flies in the face of what James Madison believed the Federal government's purpose was when the Constitution was ratified? Surely they teach this at Harvar- . . . never mind.

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”
-Benjamin Franklin

So the best way to help a poor person is not to enable them in their poverty but to motivate them to pull themselves out of it? Well, if that were true, then how did poverty completely end after the Great Society programs?

“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”
-Benjamin Franklin

So happiness is not supposed to be benevolently bestowed upon us by the State? Huh, who knew?

I hate to say it Barry, but I think your "change" is the type of thing Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and the Constitution specifically intended to stop. But what do they know? They were only the most famous of the greatest collection of men assembled at one place and time in History. You were President of the Harvard Law Review!

Read more quotes at Conservative Colloquium and The Reference Frame.

So That's What He Means

Finally, we know what Obama means by "change". Obama's own words from a Chicago Public radio interview in 2001:

"But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution. . . (The Constitution) Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted. . . one of the. . .tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change."

Glad we cleared that up eight days before the election. Thank goodness there's still time for the media to apologize to everyone they labeled as "right wing lunatics" for conjecturing that Senator Obama may be a marxist. I'm sure all the big news organizations will lead with this revelation tonight.

Also, should (God forbid) Barry win the election, can we have him hooked up to a lie detector on inauguration day when he swears to "preserve, protect, and defend" the Constitution of the United States?

Shame on Lewis Diuguid

Barack Obama is a socialist, plain and simple. He believes in a planned economy, an extremely progressive tax code, and he wants to allow the central government to intrude in almost every facet of our lives. (except if a doctor wants to kill a newborn, government's not allowed to intervene there) Obama has said this himself with his words and political platform. Socialism is socialism.

Unless that is, you're on the left and "socialist" is one of those nasty labels (like "liberal" last election) that reveals a leftist identity that you've been trying to hide from the public. So the world must be removed from public discussion. It must be twisted to mean something very foreign from its actual definition. How can we do that? Lewis Diuguid of the Kansas City Star knows how. Not satisfied with his last name merely being a palindrome, he has decided to make it synonymous with the slow death of intellectual freedom:

"The 'socialist' label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality."

I know how you feel, I had a stroke the first time I read this as well. So now we on the bigoted, race baiting, right aren't allowed to call advocates of wealth redistribution "socialists" if they happen to be half black. Diuguid goes on:

"Those freedom fighters included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the Civil Rights Movement; W.E.B. Du Bois, who in 1909 helped found the NAACP which is still the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. . ."

Anyone familiar with my blog will know that I believe Barack Obama will be the the most socialist President we've had since the Great Society. In other words, he'll be on par with LBJ and FDR -- two white guys. Unfortunately, socialism doesn't discriminate. Its been advocated by every race on planet Earth and as an ideology, its responsible for the deaths of Europeans, Africans, Asians, South Americans, Arabs, and just about any other race you can think of.

Now, if you want a term that actually has come to be associated with black people, you have one in "civil rights". The NAACP is not the oldest civil rights organization in the United States. As a commenter points out, the National Rifle Association outdates it. The NAACP was founded in 1905. The NRA was founded in 1871.

As for the NAACP, it was cofounded by Mary White Ovington, a member of the Socialist Party. I criticize the NAACP not because it is a black organization, but because it promotes socialism like other leftist organizations such as the ACLU, and NOW. If a black person or organization is socialist, its not racist to call them such.

"McCain and Palin have simply reached back in history to use an old code word for black. It set whites apart from those deemed unAmerican and those who could not be trusted during the communism scare.

Shame on McCain and Palin."

Now its time to take a journey to cliche land. This tactic is Orwellian in its suppression of free discussion. In newspeak, the term "free" couldn't describe political freedom because the concept no longer existed. You could freely use the word because half its meaning had been torn away. The previous sentence would be impossible. Unfortunately the concept of socialism does still exist, but the word will lose its meaning if people like Diugiud have their way. The easiest way to stifle discussion is to literally take away words. "Liberal" no longer means liberal, "socialism" no longer means socialism, "marxism" no longer means marxism. If one is no longer allowed to use terms to describe someone's ideology, one is extremely handicapped when trying to defeat that person in the marketplace of ideas.

Shame on Lewis Diuguid. Barack Obama is a socialist.

Think There Won't Be Another Great Depression? Just Wait for the Next New Deal

The consequences of an Obama Presidency are vast and terrible. And, as Michael Medved explains, for all intents and purposes, irreversible.

Why Labels Are Important

Barack Obama appears to be poised to win the office of the Presidency with a socialist platform. How did this happen? The United States of America smashed socialism decades ago, at home and abroad. Why then, are we now embracing it? I think the answer is that we're not embracing it. We're embracing a candidate, Barack Obama. I don't believe that most Americans are aware of Barry's radicalism. America is a center-right country. Barry knows this and has adjusted his rhetoric accordingly. He says he'll give 95% of Americans a tax cut. Sounds pretty conservative doesn't it? Except that 95% of Americans don't pay taxes. Giving a "tax credit" to those who don't pay taxes is socialism, welfare, redistribution of wealth, whatever you prefer to call it, except until recently, no one (at least no one connected to the McCain campaign) has called it that. Only during the final month of the campaign does McCain take off the gloves and attempt to warn the American people:

"Barack Obama's tax plan would convert the IRS into a giant welfare agency, redistributing massive amounts of wealth at the direction of politicians in Washington," McCain said in a radio address.

Way to go, but where was this in June? Obama isn't anything fresh or new. He's running on over a centruy of failed policy that is responsible for untold misery and stagnation. He embodies a radical leftism many in America thought we'd defeated and left for dead in the seventies. This should have been a simple exercise for the McCain campaign, the Obama camp is seemingly run by William Jennings Bryan and the reanimated corpse of Friedrich Nietzsche. These ideas and ideologies were long ago discredited. However, McCain has waited until almost the last minute to point this out. If he loses, he can only blame himself.

Was He Waiting for Schieffer to do It?

If Barry Obama is elected on November 4th, he will be the most radical, left wing President in American history. This will happen without the opposition candidate pointing this out to the American electorate. Think all those "undecided independents" would be leaning toward Obama after last night's debate if McCain had detailed how he was a socialist? Johnny is so used to attacking Republicans and conservatives, that he looks lost when dealing with someone truly deserving of his ire: a left wing socialist.

Last night's debate was McCain's perfect opportunity to paint Obama with a socialist brush. It wouldn't have been hard. The debate was centered on economics, McCain had every chance. He properly mentioned Obama's association with Ayers and ACORN, but he didn't tie it all together. Why did Ayers support Obama at the start of his political career? Because Obama is a radical socialist, in line with the views of the SDS and the Weathermen. Why did Obama work for ACORN? Because they actively promote socialism in America. These were softballs lobed to McCain that he didn't swing at. McCain did bring up Joe the Plumber and Obama's "spread the wealth" comment, but once again he didn't tie it together. He never used the "s" word. He never explained why Obama's comment was damaging, what it said about his ideological beliefs. I could be wrong, but I never heard him use the word "redistribution" when talking about Obama, he should have. He should have quoted Marx, that's essentially what Obama was doing: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." This is what "spread the wealth around" means. There is a dangerously high probability that we're going to elect a radical socialist to the office of the Presidency and no one in the McCain campaign or the Republican Party is warning the American people. Why the hell do we vote for them?