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REQUIEM

Below are the two final essays to be posted on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. The first one is written by a friend -- screen name 'Euro-American Scum' -- who, over the past four years, has been the most faithful essayist here. He has written about everything from his pilgrimage to Normandy in 2004 to take part in the 60th–year commemoration of the invasion, to his memories of his tour in Vietnam. His dedication to America’s founding principles ... and those who have sacrificed to preserve them over the past 200+ years ... is unequaled. Thank you, E-A-S. It has been a privilege to include your writing here, and it is a privilege to call you my friend.

The second essay is my own farewell. And with it I thank all of the many regular visitors, and those who may have only dropped in occasionally, for coming here. I hope you learned something. I hope a seed or two was planted. But, even if not, I thank you for stopping by ... 25 March, 2010

10/31/2008

The Incomparable Wisdom of Ezra Taft Benson

Ezra Taft Benson.jpg

Ezra Taft Benson served as President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from 1985 until his death in 1994. Long before holding that esteemed position within the church, he served for eight years as President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture.

During Benson’s tenure as Secretary of Agriculture, the press predicted that he wouldn’t last a full term, and many republicans in congress believed that he was ‘too radical’ for the party’s own good. Yet, despite vehement opposition from the media and his own party, Benson remained in his post for the full duration of Eisenhower’s two terms, consistently delivering anti-communist speeches that warned of a socialist/communist conspiracy to eventually bring America to her knees.

Later, in the 1960s, he addressed the students of Brigham Young University, warning, in part:

I have talked face to face with the godless communist leaders. It may surprise you to learn that I was host to Mr. Kruschev for a half day when he visited the United States, not that I’m proud of it. I opposed his coming then, and I still feel it was a mistake to welcome this atheistic murderer as a state visitor.

But, according to President Eisenhower, Kruschev had expressed a desire to learn something of American Agriculture — and after seeing Russian agriculture I can understand why.

As we talked face to face, he indicated that my grandchildren would live under communism. After assuring him that I expected to do all in my power to assure that his and all other grandchildren will live under freedom he arrogantly declared in substance:

    You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands!
See previous related essays here that corroborate Benson’s standing as a modern-day patriot, and a belatedly-recognized prophet of much repute:

Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

'The One' is My Shepherd, I Shall Not Want

~ joanie

10/27/2008

'The One' is My Shepherd,
I Shall Not Want ...

Obama_and_Sheep.jpg

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, in ‘Democracy in America’:

[The principle of equality prepares men for government that] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic character cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent and guided … Such a power … stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd ...

One week and one day from today it appears that the people of America may elect Barack Hussein Obama President of the United States and leader of the free world. They may also be electing to the Senate and the House of Representatives a majority – perhaps even a filibuster-proof majority – of democrats from Obama’s own party.

Congress’s approval rating sits at nine percent, and yet the voters will be voting for ‘more of the same’. Why? Because their particular senator and/or congressman brings home the local bacon. Yet they resent the other 530+ ‘leaders’ who sit on the Hill and do exactly the same for their respective constituencies.

Such is the mindset of the citizenry of America 2008: What’s in it for me? and Don’t bother me with the particulars.

In past elections, whatever the make-up of the ‘leadership’ in Washington, and whatever the make-up of those who placed them in office, there was always reason for hope that America would rise above mistakes made, or errors in judgment ... next time ‘round.

I do not believe such is the case this time. An Obama election, and a democrat majority in congress, will ensure a permanent left lock on power for the remainder of America's existence. They have seen to it, by directing a left-leaning path for the past fifty years. We are on the brink of closing the door behind us, making impossible any return to conservative leadership.

Barack Obama is an inexperienced 'leader', with no record of meaningful accomplishments, and dangerous delusions of grandeur -- a self-serving ideologue whose mentors and associates embrace anything but what is best for America.

Many of them serve a Marxist god.

Most of them speak more ill of, than praise for, our republic.

Most of them despise the capitalist system and the free market.

Some of them despise the white race.

Most of them place little value on human life – those born, and those as yet unborn -- except to the degree that it can advance their ideology.

Most of them hold our Constitution in utter disdain and seek to declare its irrelevance with every stroke of their arrogant pens.

Most of them believe themselves to be members of a chosen elite, who possess the right to author oppressive laws that apply to the common man, but from which they are exempt.

Most of them believe that the right to own personal property, and the right to save the fruits of one’s labor, are gifts bestowed by the state, and they can freely be taken away, or redistributed, at the whim of the ruling class.

Most of them do not believe in the citizen’s right to defend himself.

Most of them believe that success is not achieved through hard work and personal industry, but rather through a government-authored and enforced state of ‘equality’.

Most of them believe that personal responsibility is an intolerant concept, and that we all must share the negative consequences of, and pay the price for, the foolish, frivolous, or self-serving actions of others.

Most of them believe that our children are wards of the state, and that parents must look to the state for child-rearing guidance, or answer to the courts.

Most of them believe in a borderless world in which the concepts of national identity, national sovereignty, and national pride are irrelevant.

Most of them consider a lie, or the breaking of a law, even more worthwhile than the truth, or obedience to law, if the end suits their purposes.

Most of them hold that a belief in God, and Biblical morality, serve merely as a roadblock on the pathway to self-realization.

What have these leftist ‘leaders’ – in politics, academia, and the media -- achieved over the past few decades, which will ensure their political pre-eminence, effectively rendering their power coalitions omnipotent, from this time forward?

  • They have succeeded in diluting the perspective of the American populace to the extent that those who revere and appreciate our proud heritage, and, even more importantly, those who are able to define, and willing to defend, its precepts represent a minority of the population.


  • They have done so primarily by indoctrinating two generations of American children into believing that they are ‘citizens of the world’, and have neglected to teach them the proud underpinnings that have kept their homeland afloat for more than two prosperous centuries. They are premeditatedly robbing us of our precious national identity.


  • They have also convinced American parents that parenthood can be accomplished through absence, and through a refocusing on ‘self’. Most of today’s parents have little sense of civic duty; nor do they attempt to instill such in their children.

  • They have succeeded in transforming the most effective healthcare system in the history of mankind into a bureaucratic monstrosity, teetering on the brink of disaster. Through the demonization of, and the imposition of monumental regulations on, the healthcare industry itself, the insurance industry, and the drug industry – and by allowing tort law free reign to file all manner of expensive frivolous lawsuits – they have premeditatedly driven up the cost of healthcare to the point where that care has diminished in effectiveness, and America may soon have no choice but to turn to the government for assistance. When complete socialization of the American healthcare system is instituted, they will have achieved their power-hungry goal, and significantly more Americans will receive inferior care, or die unnecessarily.

  • They have succeeded in circumventing the Constitution to the point where the most magnificent blueprint for governance ever conceived by the mind of man has now been officially declared all but irrelevant. The nationalization of private enterprise, the using of hundreds of billions of dollars of public monies in order to bail out both private enterprise and citizens in financial difficulty, are but two of the most recent grotesque examples of blatantly unconstitutional law that enters into the books without so much as a question as to their obvious unconstitutionality.

  • They have succeeded in filtering the goings-on in Washington, and around the world, so that, in the majority of media outlets, only those events that elevate the leftist ideology, are reported to the populace. The media have effectively become a podium for leftist propaganda. Those who attempt to expose the arrogant bias are either silenced or ridiculed. Censorship and character assassination are commonplace tactics in the media's leftist handbook.


  • They have succeeded in turning military victories into defeats, both literally and figuratively – by retreating when victory could have been won, or by labeling a victory as a defeat, and appealing to their media cohorts to get out the word that such is the case. They have done so, often by portraying the American military as brutal oppressors, while at the same time refusing to report the extent of the genuine brutality of the enemy – by refusing to acknowledge the American military’s progress and relatively ‘moral’ wartime behavior, and incessantly focusing instead on minor defeats and the infinitesimal percentage of personnel gone awry – and by consistently attributing false or evil motives as America’s reasons for engaging, whether those negative motives are true or not. In short, leftists have consistently undercut America’s military, at the same time that our young men and women are placing themselves in harm’s way.


  • They have sought to fill our courts with left-leaning judges who, by definition, seek to place their personal political convictions above the dictates of the Constitution. As a result, legislating from the bench, and adjudicating in conflict with Constitutional boundaries, have become the rule of the day. Soon Americans, severely constrained by unconstitutional laws, will have nowhere to turn to appeal for Constitutional justice.


  • They have usurped gargantuan power for the state, handcuffed industry, made America increasingly energy-dependent on those who seek our annihilation, and taken away many of our personal freedoms, in the name of the hoax known as ‘global warming’. Our ability to provide our own reliable energy sources has been severely handicapped to the point where our very survival is at stake


  • They have penetrated and perverted ‘the system’ to the extent that the vote of the ‘average American’ can effectively be cancelled out by votes obtained in a fraudulent manner. They have burdened ‘the system’ with fraud to the point where ‘the system’ cannot effectively weed out the deceivers – thus ensuring that an honest election will never occur again.
  • They have cast aside the sanctity of life, and the recognition that it is God-given, in deference to the worship of self.
The power of special interests has expanded to the point where the power of the people pales in comparison. The recent actions taken by both the administration and congress in an effort to confront the looming financial meltdown were taken (1) in opposition to overwhelming public sentiment, and (2) in order to place the gargantuan bill, aimed at least in part to bail out ‘friends of congress’, on the shoulders of the American citizen (and his children). And the left played an enormous role in both the cause of the meltdown, and its proposed ‘solutions’.

Like the bailout legislation, countless other laws are passed each year (the majority of them, I suspect), not with the benefit of the American people in mind, but with either the furtherance of a political agenda, or ‘payback for political favors done’, as their intent.

America is being overrun with illegal invaders crossing our southern borders. Our ‘leadership’ in Washington is doing nothing about the invasion. Our mainstream media is keeping a tight lid on the rising cost of that invasion – ‘cost’ in terms of taxpayer dollars, violence on the streets of our cities, frequent injuries and deaths incurred by our Border Patrol agents, and the infiltration every year into our society of millions of people who bear no allegiance to our republic, a sub-group of which seeks to annex a portion of our nation for themselves. They are dramatically altering the very fabric of our society. And our ‘leaders’ continue to pander to them, at our expense. Illegal aliens cannot vote (yet), but their American-born offspring can. And these children will vote for the party that keeps the entitlements coming.

Much of the above, and much more, has been the result of the decades-long infiltration of heavy-handed, left-leaning ideology into our schools, our media, and our ‘leadership’ in Washington.

But there have always been those who sought to keep our left-ward movement from becoming an unstoppable march: (1) There were patriots in congress who sought to keep the socialists in check; (2) There were media decision-makers intent on retaining a sense of fairness in their reporting; (3) And, above all, there were a majority of the citizenry who saw it as their civic duty to be well-informed, to know the real backgrounds and agendas of the candidates, and to weigh those considerations against the most powerful one: what is best for America (as defined by the Constitution).

None of the above three conditions exist anymore -- not to the degree that they must, in order to succeed in holding back the march toward the total tyranny of the left.

If Barack Obama ascends to the presidency, the chipping away at our republic's foundations represented by all of the above conditions will increase ... in both intensity and speed. And our enemies will be emboldened because a novice (and an anti-American novice at that) will be serving as America's Commander-in-Chief.

Americans want change. And change they will get. It will not necessarily be a change in direction, but a change in the speed with which we achieve the destination so carefully laid out by our ruling elite. They have been patiently working for decades, but their patience is wearing thin, and their foot is on the accelerator. We have already witnessed the shifting of gears, in our leadership's lightning-fast unconstitutional response to their self-created economic meltdown.

Those in power will become ever more arrogant about their desires to achieve a United Socialist States of America. The socialist steamroller will be moving us toward the dark abyss at break-neck speed, and standing in its way will prove hazardous to your health.

Hang on. We’re about to embark on a dizzying national nightmare.

Fast_Forward_1.jpg

~ joanie

10/25/2008

The Once-Great Democratic Party

Mark Alexander.jpg

by Mark Alexander

Thomas Jefferson wrote, 'The government is best which governs least,' and that sentiment was thematic in all of his writing about the role of government. So what happened to the Party of Jefferson, the once-great Democratic Party, the champion of limited government?

Jefferson, who authored our Declaration of Independence, led the Anti-Federalist movement against the ratification of the Constitution, because he feared that those elected to lead our nation would forgo their higher calling to 'support and defend the Constitution,' and become pawns for special interests, using those constituencies to perpetuate their office and further centralize government power.

Nowhere was he more concerned about this degradation of public integrity than in regard to the judiciary. Jefferson feared it would become the 'despotic branch', undermining and altering the proposed constitution by judicial diktat rather than its prescribed method.

Jefferson’s opponent, James Madison, arguing for ratification of our Constitution, which he authored, believed that individual and states’ rights would endure: 'Ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments... would be signals of general alarm ... But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity.' (Federalist No. 46).

By 1792, however, Madison himself had joined his fellow Virginian, Jefferson, in opposition to the Federalist Party.

Jefferson’s intellect and his insights into the nature of man were astounding, so much so that 170 years later another famous Democrat, John F. Kennedy, welcomed the 49 Nobel Prize recipients to the White House saying, 'I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House—with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.'

Jefferson's concerns about the degraded integrity of public men have never been clearer than in the current presidential cycle. At no point in history has the differential in 'Presidential Character' between the two leading candidates been more clear.

But this election is much more than a referendum on the two candidates, John Sidney McCain and Barack Hussein Obama; it is a referendum on the ability of a majority of Americans voters to discern between one candidate who possesses the presidential character and integrity of a statesman, and one who does not.

In fact, Obama could not even qualify for a basic security clearance if he was applying for a government job because of his close association with unrepentant terrorists William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. These 'useful idiots', apologists for socialist political and economic agendas, used their radical celebrity to launch Barack Obama’s political career and are his mentors to this day.

No issue is more pressing in this election cycle than the one that concerned Jefferson most—that of the 'Despotic Branch.'

Consider this: Five Supreme Court justices will be over 70 years of age in the first year of the next presidential term. Two of them, the most liberal, will be 76 and 89. The next president will thus determine whether the Supreme Court will abide by leftist ideology, or by their oath to support and defend our Constitution. It’s no exaggeration to say that the future of our nation hangs in the balance.

If we are not a nation governed by a firm Constitution of laws, but a 'Living Constitution', which, as Jefferson noted, would be a 'mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please,' then we are a nation of men.

Conservatives and liberals can argue various policy points ad nauseum, but the real question is this: Are we a nation of laws or a nation of men? The terminus of nations that are governed by men rather than laws has, for the entirety of recorded history, been tyranny. In the last century alone, the plight of hundreds of millions under dictators such as Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam and, who would be next …

Jefferson understood this, as once did his Democratic Party.

The Patriot’s mission is to advocate for individual liberty and responsibility, the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and the promotion of free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values.

These principles used to be the centerpiece of the Democratic Party; they are now its antithesis.

A colleague recently sent me a parody on why we should elect Democrats: 'I think the government will do a better job of spending my money than I could. When we pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq, I know the Islamic terrorists will stop trying to kill us. I believe people who can’t tell us if it will rain in two or three days can now tell us the polar ice caps will disappear in a century if we don’t comply with Orwellian government economic oversight. English has no place being the official language in America. I’d rather pay $4 for a gallon of gas than allow drilling for oil off the coasts of America or in that vast Alaskan wasteland, ANWR. ‘Big Oil’s’ five-percent profit on a gallon of gas is obscene, but the government tax of 18 to 35 percent on the same gallon of gas is just fine.'

The parody continues: 'I believe businesses in America should not be allowed to make profit—it should be confiscated by the government so politicians and bureaucrats can redistribute that profit as they see fit. I believe guns cause crimes and murder, not the sociopaths using them, and, thus, should be confiscated. Besides, when someone threatens my family, I know the government can respond faster with a call to 911 than I can with a gun in my hand. It’s a right to kill millions of babies while objecting to the death penalty for murderers. I believe five elitist liberal judges should rewrite the Constitution by diktat to suit Leftist agendas that could never pass proper amendment.'

This caricature of the Democratic Party would be humorous if it did not, in fact, reflect its actual platform.

In his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention this year [see correction in comment #1 below], Virginia Senate candidate Mark Warner described the Republican Party: 'It is made up of the Christian Coalition... It is made up of the right-to-lifers... It’s made up of the NRA... It is made up of the home schoolers... It’s made up of a whole coalition of people that have all sorts of differing views that I think most of us in this room would find threatening to what it means to be an American.'

A few decades ago, that list of folks would have been welcome in the Democratic Party, not “threatening to what it means to be an American.”

But today, that Party is fundamentally flawed in its platform, and it co-opts voter constituencies who, though they may be good people in general, are fundamentally disabled in their understanding of our nation’s founding principles and their civic roles and responsibilities.

The real question is not so much what has happened to the Party of Jefferson, but what has happened to 'the people' who now call themselves Democrats?

Obama is not the problem, just its manifestation. The problem is that we are a nation with a collapsing foundation of broken families, where the faith of our founders has been replaced with the real “opiate of the masses,” the mass media, and where ignorance has been institutionalized through our 'public education' apparatchiks.

Perhaps we are a nation where a majority of the electorate now identifies with the dysfunctional pathology of Obama than with the individual character and institutional principles that are the foundation of our Democratic Republic.

The good news is that in my home, and tens of millions like it, we still model for our children the principle of 'third person' living: God first, others (including family, neighbors and country) second, and self third. It is our highest ambition for our children that they will invest their lives in service to others, that they will honor the blood and sacrifice of generations of Patriots before them and be steadfast in their determination to defend our Constitution and the liberties it embodies in order to extend freedom to the next generation.

We have not surrendered this political battle, any more than we have surrendered the cultural war in which we are now engaged.

Thomas Jefferson wrote, for posterity, 'Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them.'

Today, tragically, his once-noble Democratic Party has embraced bondage and servitude.

The Patriot Post

10/21/2008

The Case of the Missing Records

Columbo.jpg

Excuse me, Mr. Obama. I didn’t mean to startle you, sir. You must be real focused on that paper, sir. Is that a picture of an acorn in the corner there, sir?

The acorn ... are you a member of one of those environmentalist groups? You know, the kind that’re into saving trees and all? I love trees, sir. The wife and I sometimes drive up the coast ... some of those redwoods are two hundred years old, sir … but acorns ...

Oh, sorry, sir ... I know you’re real busy with important stuff. I mean I’ve never talked to somebody who was running for President, sir ... ah ... I hate to bother you, but just a minute of your time is all I’ll take, sir. Okay, sir?

See, I have these missing pieces that are keeping me from wrapping this up. I’m almost there, sir ... just a few loose ends and I’ll be outta your hair ... and you can get back to saving the trees, sir.

By the way, did I mention that the wife is crazy about you? She loves the way you talk so smooth without a teleprompter. You do talk without a teleprompter, don’t you, Senator? The wife ... she says your words remind her of a velvet glove, sir. They make her feel so comfortable and safe, sir ...

Oh, sorry sir, I didn’t mean to get off track here.

I’ll just take a minute of your time here ... just a few details, Senator. I sometimes get hung up on details. Drives the wife nuts, but it’s just the way I am, sir. I’ll get these details all ironed out and I’ll be outta your hair in a heartbeat, sir. Don’t want to hold you up ... you’re running for President and all.

I promised the wife I’d wrap this up this afternoon and take her to Eat ‘n Park for supper. She loves the tuna melt at Eat n’ Park. Me, I’m partial to their mushroom cheeseburgers. Man, my mouth waters just thinkin’ about ‘em. Ever been there, sir ... Eat n’ Park?

No, huh? You oughta try it sometime.

Anyway, back to basics here, sir ... like I said, sir, I can’t seem to fill in a couple blanks here. I’m sure it’s ... ah ... just some bureaucratic blunder or something, so if you could just tell me where these things are, I’ll be outta your way like I said ... in a heartbeat.

I have 'em ... I have 'em written down here somewhere for you ... a list. Oh, wait ... sorry about the wetness, sir. My dog ... I call him ‘Dog’, sir. The wife and I racked our brains for days and days tryin’ to come up with a good name for a sorry lookin’ basset ...

What? Oh, sorry, sir. I tend to get sidetracked.

Anyway, my list is kind of wet, sir, so I’ll just read it off to you. Don’t want to have to make you wash your hands ...

There’s ... let’s see ... there’s about a dozen things I can’t seem to put my hands on. When I try to find ‘em, they’re all labeled ‘not to be released’ or ‘not available’.

It’s almost like you’re some kind of alien ... you know, like a guy in the movies who’s sent down from some far planet and he has no history. Sometimes he has no fingerprints ... imagine that ... you have fingerprints, Senator?

The Body Snatchers ... those pod people ... they had no fingerprints. The wife and I ... when we saw that movie in the movies, she ...

Oh, sorry, sir ... it’s the sugar. I had a cruller on my way over here ... can’t seem to drive by Dunkin’ Donuts without goin’ in for one of their crullers. Boy, you put a mushroom cheeseburger together with a great cruller and you got a meal fit for a ...

Ah, sir. I’m sorry ... back to these loose ends ...

Your birth certificate. I can’t seem to find a record of your birth certificate, sir. You have one of them, right sir? If you don’t, you know you can get a duplicate sent to you. I think it costs somethin’ ... twenty bucks maybe ... but it’d be worth gettin’ a copy of … being as your running for president and all.

And your Selective Service registration records. They won’t release them, sir. You did register with Selective Service, didn’t you, sir?

Your medical records, Senator. Most presidents release their medical records, just so we can know we’re not electing somebody who might be dangerous ... or really sick or something ... so I’m askin’ you to do that for us ... have them release those records, sir, if it’s not too much trouble, sir.

Your records and major papers from Occidental, Columbia and Harvard, sir. All of those colleges tell me they’ve been instructed not to release anything about you, Senator. We’d be interested to know what you studied there, sir, and what your ideas were. If you don’t mind, that is …

Your thesis paper from Columbia ... I think that would be interesting to us all, sir. You must be proud of that, sir, so we’d really like to take a gander at it ... if you don’t mind, that is ...

Your records from your law practice and professorship, sir ... you know, who you represented in court cases ... and what articles you published in the Harvard Law Review or while you were lecturing at the University of Chicago. I keep comin’ up with a big dead end on that, sir ... and I know I must be lookin’ in the wrong places ... or something ...

And your records from when you served in the Senate in Illinois. They seem to be lost or something ... everyone I hunt down who should know where they are tells me they’re ‘not available’. You must have copies of some of that yourself, sir. Such a distinguished career ... the papers have to be somewhere ...

Oh? You have to meet Senator Biden for lunch? If you wouldn’t mind, sir, I could join you, and we could wrap this up over a couple of mushroom cheese burgers.

Oh, okay. I see. Hey, listen. I know you’re busy. If this is too much stuff for you to get ahold of today, tell you what ... I’ll stop back tomorrow. Maybe I’ll even bring the wife. She’s a big fan.

I mean, I know you’re busy.

I’ll just let myself out ... and I’ll be back tomorrow ... and the day after ... and the day after. I’d appreciate it, though, if you could get this stuff to me within the next couple of weeks, sir. Time is kinda running short here ...

~ joanie

(Thanks, L.M., for the suggestion, the list of 'missing' items, and permission to use and embellish the idea.) :)

10/18/2008

Two Minute Warning

barbarians.jpg

Alas, once again, I beg your forgiveness. My enforced hiatus from AADB has once again left me high and dry and far from home. As before, I have a note from my doctor. But I must admit, prolonged separation from this esteemed group of disaffected patriots has all the effects of being cast adrift in one of the lifeboats from the Titanic wondering when (and if) rescue will come.

Once again, I’ve been battling pneumonia – the onset of which came upon me shortly after Labor Day. That’s got to make me one of the earliest casualties of this year’s cold and flu season. Fortunately, I am now at an age where I qualify for the senior-citizen-priority list that goes around the local pharmacies this time of year. Unfortunately, I am the wrong ethnicity, so I can go pound sand. Consider it a glass-half-full, glass-half-empty situation, and you’ll be pretty close to how life goes on out here in the golden west. The government has sixty years of slave labor they’ve invested in, and by God, they’re going to protect it. So ... no habla Espanòl, no flu shot. It’s that simple.

But, there remains my doctor – ever the faithful servant, whose medical practice is also his Christian ministry – and he has made allowances for those of us whose access to the health care system has been cut off. I don’t see him often. When one is the recipient of this kind of generosity, it is imperative not to abuse the privilege. But, given my track record when it comes to health concerns, and after three days of coughing and spitting, I figured I better get in to see him before he retires and I really am cut off from the entire health care system.

He was not thrilled to see me for my fourth go-round with this affliction in the last year. He was even less enthused when he asked me if I had ever been exposed to toxic chemicals. And when I racked my brain before finally coming up with the correct Jeopardy ® question – namely “What is Agent Orange?” the gift that keeps on giving – he became downright discouraged. Not to worry, I informed him. I know there’s no treatment, let alone a cure. It’s just an ongoing fact of life that all of us throwaway warriors live with. And considering the alternative, I’ll take those odds and call it even.

So, after six weeks of massive doses of Biaxin © – not to mention sneaking out a couple of Saturdays ago to the USC – Ohio State game (I am nothing if not hardcore when it comes to USC football. More on that in a bit.) – I have come to the conclusion that either my immune system is running down or the bugs are getting stronger. Or both.

During my last visit, before declaring me discharged as cured, my doctor summarily informed me that the day would undoubtedly come when I would come wheezing into his office and no antibiotic known to medical science would do any good. Sooner or later, this bug was going to kill me.

I told him the country was suffering from a similar ailment, so what made him think I was immune?

And so here I am at last. The prodigal contributor to AADB. Euro-American Scum late, rather than the late Euro-American Scum. At least for the time being.

But, pneumonia or no pneumonia, it’s still fall. And while the golden state can’t claim glorious fall colors, it’s still college football season. And no way was I going to miss the USC home opener, even if they had to wheel me out there in an oxygen tent.

And what a glorious Saturday it was. A magnificent warm, cloudless day, spent tailgating with my fellow alumni – many of whom are now comfortably retired, and whose children (the next generation of USC graduates) have taken up the mantle of ruling the world – while their aging baby boomer parents enjoy the fruits of corporate victory. They’re getting out while the getting is good, the Dom Peringnón is cold, the caviar fresh and their collective stock portfolios still have some value.

But there are some things that are not as they always have been. For right in the heart of campus, adjacent to the statue of Tommy Trojan was a hole in the ground that had to be fifty feet deep, cordoned off by a chain link fence and construction signs. The time-honored student union, student activities center and visitor’s center were gone. I was astonished. I can’t tell you how much time I wasted in that student union. Where they once stood was a gash in the earth reminiscent of ground zero, complete with shards of building walls that had yet to be removed, similar to that slab of the World Trade Center that stood shattered and gaunt against the smoking rubble in lower Manhattan on that ghastly day.

Why the comparison to 9/11 you may ask? I’ll tell you. It seems the Bin Laden Trust ponied up $25 million large to the Board of Trustees and so informed them that they considered the construction of a state-of-the-art mosque and adjacent madrassah to be a good thing, a very good thing indeed. And since the University of Southern California is like most secular, liberal institutions of its type, they agreed. Yes, it was an outstanding idea, worthy of the best efforts of the university administration, and something upon which they would move with all due haste. How do they put it in the wonderful world of the academy? Love of country may almost always fade, but money stays green forever.

Who knew? Somehow I always figured Bin Laden liked Notre Dame plus the points.

And so, the new Islamic Center is going up in the heart of campus, scheduled to be completed sometime in 2010. Along with it, will be the inauguration of the new, cutting-edge University of Southern California School of Islamic Studies, staffed by the most brilliant Islamic scholars the Middle East has to offer. Spare no expense, that’s the policy. And with pockets as deep as they are at USC, no expense will be spared, rest assured. One small detail that was consigned to the back of the promotional brochure describing this latest building project – courses in the School of Islamic Studies will be a university requirement. All students will be required to take at least eight credits in order to graduate.

Welcome to the global village.

Other goings-on around campus were likewise noteworthy.

  • The Daily Trojan – the local on-campus newspaper – ran an ad that spoke thus: “Are you a visiting Islamic student fluent in Arabic, Farsi or other Middle Eastern dialects? Then the FBI wants you for a fast track career to the highest echelons (italics mine) of government service.” (Kind of like advertising for a select group of Aryan übermenschen for employment at Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1943. Remember that when you get a visit from your friendly, neighborhood special agent after the Osama, er ... Obama regime ramps up in earnest.)


  • The Daily Trojan also ran an article about how the USC faculty has collectively contributed over $3.5 million to the Obama campaign and only $43,000 to John McCain. And who said university professors were underpaid these days?


  • Speaking of which, the savior of the secular world, Barack Obama himself, will be on campus this fall to talk about the new global, one-world culture.


  • Not to be outdone, John McCain will also be passing through campus on a campaign swing to speak on unified global commerce in a borderless society. Of course, this was before the recent stock market meltdown, so I wonder if he’s thinking twice about making the trip. If he folded his tent in Michigan, why on earth would he come to California where he doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Mecca of even losing gracefully?
For all the changes, there were some eternal traditions that endure. The trust fund babies were back from their round the world summer flings, all poised and ready to take over some multinational corporation upon graduation. Their numbers are fewer than in previous years, but that’s the nature of the elite. They are few in number, loyal only to the bottom line, and citizens of the world.

I took a stroll down to the Viterbi School of Engineering to test out my foreign language immersion techniques. Sadly, I have a lot of work to do in that area. Could be, past a certain age, the brain just doesn’t absorb Farsi, Arabic, Hindi or Chinese as easily as in younger years. However, when it comes to immersion, there is no better place to practice it. You won’t hear the English language in that part of campus except in the classroom. And the administration is considering a change to that practice since there are no more home grown students in those programs anymore. Lots of bright people in engineering at USC though. All grimly determined to do the heavy lifting, provide the brilliance and innovation at a better price, and not bother to see so much as a nickel of recompense for their efforts.

All the same, it was a football Saturday, and that’s what I came out for. There’s just so much cultural erosion one can absorb before the clarion call of the Trojan marching band calls the gridiron warriors to glory. And so it was on this day.

Upon arriving at the Coliseum, my friend and I took the tunnel walk. That’s the first excursion through the tunnel entrance to the stadium proper, after which, the scene explodes out on to a sea of green after nine months of nothing. It is a moment to be savored, and savor it we did on this afternoon as well.

The big buzz from the athletic department was whether USC quarterback Mark Sanchez will burst forth from the Coliseum tunnel at the home opener with the USC banner or the Mexican flag. He has already been turned down by the administration to have said flag stitched on his uniform jersey along with “Viva La Raza” where his name tape on the back of his jersey would ordinarily go. However, they did acquiesce when it came to engraving said Mexican flag on his mouthpieces, something one of the Latino USC dentists prepared for him personally.

True to his Cardinal and Gold roots, Sanchez came out with the Trojan banner, leading the team on its never-ending quest for glory and greatness.

And so, the game commenced. And when the dust settled, the Trojans crushed the hapless Buckeyes, 35-3, sent them reeling back to the frozen wastes of Columbus minus the tuba player to dot the I in Script Ohio and stood alone atop the college football world.

Kind of like America in 1945.

One week later, USC laid an egg of prehistoric proportions in Corvallis, Oregon against that awesome college football juggernaut, Oregon State. Season over. Unlike the teams of the SEC, USC doesn’t have a built-in mulligan in its golf bag. And now the Trojans sit on the sidelines, irrelevant, forgotten, a shadow of their former magnificent selves, while other, more vibrant programs vie for the BCS title.

Kind of like America in 2008.

It was a short stay at the top. For both institutions.

And so, the season commenced. And as is my custom, I take this time to take a break from the worries of the world. The economic implosion can take a back seat to ESPN Gameday. The presidential campaign can carry on without me while I gleefully watch Lou Holtz and Mark May sniping at each other on Sportscenter. The destruction of our national identity can wait until January while I direct my fury at Craig James as he goes on and on about the smashmouth football they play in the Big 12 and how USC is soft, weak and doesn’t play defense. Let’s face it, this is my time of year, and I’m taking a break. I promised myself years ago that later in life, I would enjoy such distractions as season tickets to USC football. Well, later in life just got here.

Only this year, it’s not working.

This year, it’s impossible to filter out the collapse of what passes for the country. It’s unfeasible to ignore that however the election goes, we face different sides of the same coin – One in which an out-an-out America hater, along with his congressional minions will overtly destroy what remains of the American soul. The other will enact his own version of American patriotism – a borderless, global society in which wealth and power are concentrated among the select few and what remains are the serfs who service them. Welcome to 21st century feudalism. Try bailing out Wall Street when the only people who pay taxes work for 15¢ a day and don’t speak English. And then watch the whole house of cards collapse like the World Trade Center.

As to who is who and what is what in this scenario, you can fill in the blanks. They both approach the same point from different ends of the political spectrum. And that point is the end of the republic we used to know and love.

Like any good Roman in the last days of the empire, I’m going to the Coliseum. I don’t know how it got to be 2008, how I came to be irrelevant and obsolete, what happened to my country, and frankly I don’t care. Actually, I do, to all of the above. But brooding about it will do no good at all. It won’t bring the country back, and won’t ease the pain of loss. So, it’s time for bread a circuses. And I mean to enjoy both while I still have time. For twelve hours on a Saturday afternoon, nothing else exists but USC football. Only this year, it’s impossible not to notice that the barbarians are not merely at the gates, they’re coming over the seven hills, and will probably be slaughtering the spectators on the fifty-yard line at halftime.

So we’re down to the two-minute warning. For the Trojans of USC, the season as a whole, and the entire country.

What will happen, I wonder, when the game is finally over?

    8 “Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are on the sinful kingdom,
    And I will destroy it from the face of the earth;
    Yet I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,” says the Lord.
    9 “For surely I will command,
    And will sift the house of Israel among all nations,
    As a grain is sifted in a sieve;
    Yet not the smallest grain shall fall to the ground.
    10 All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword,
    Who say, ‘The calamity shall not overtake nor confront us.’”
    – Amos 9:8-10
by Euro-American Scum
(contributing Team Member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)

-- Euro-American Scum can be reached at eascum@yahoo.com --

10/13/2008

Barack Obama and the
Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

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What follows is the longest article that has ever appeared on this weblog. With that said, I urge every reader to read and absorb every word. I do not believe there is any piece of writing out there, capable of being read in one short sitting, that better puts into perspective the state of our republic, economically, socially and politically -- and correctly addresses the wicked reasons for the decay and corruption. If you read nothing of personal gravity this year, read this.

At this stage, I do not even know whether there is any recourse for the 'average American'. But it would do us all well to know where we stand, what it appears the future will hold for us all, and why.

Mr. Simpson is willing to stick his head above the crowd in order to educate the electorate. Yet, today, anyone who musters the courage to do so is considered a conspiracy theorist by ninety-nine percent of his fellow citizens.

Why?

Because the truth has been so effectively buried by the mainstream media, and political rhetoric that also seeks to hide that truth has been honed to a virtual artform.

Combine the media's virtually unbridled power, and the covert agenda of many of our 'leaders', with the general apathy and ignorance of the populace and you paint a portrait of a socialist/Marxist steamroller, gaining huge momentum, with virtually nothing of significance standing in its way.

When I picture that small handful of Americans, such as Mr. Simpson, attempting to awaken their countrymen to the true nature of this (and past, and future) debacle(s), I picture something akin to that lone Chinese student standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square back in 1989.

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Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

by Jim Simpson

America waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.

Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama's connections to his radical mentors -- Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others. David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks.org have also contributed a wealth of information and have noted Obama's radical connections since the beginning.

Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the Radical Left. When seen together, the influences on Obama's life comprise a who's who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.

But even this doesn't fully describe the extreme nature of this candidate. He can be tied directly to a malevolent overarching strategy that has motivated many, if not all, of the most destructive radical leftist organizations in the United States since the 1960s.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis

In an earlier post, I noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress - with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

Why?

One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.

I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don't laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:

"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)

Newsmax rounds out the picture:

Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation's wealth.

In their Nation article, Cloward and Piven were specific about the kind of "crisis" they were trying to create:

By crisis, we mean a publicly visible disruption in some institutional sphere. Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention.

No matter where the strategy is implemented, it shares the following features:

    1. The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.

    2. The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.

    3. The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse.
Capitalizing on the racial unrest of the 1960s, Cloward and Piven saw the welfare system as their first target. They enlisted radical black activist George Wiley, who created the National Welfare Reform Organization (NWRO) to implement the strategy. Wiley hired militant foot soldiers to storm welfare offices around the country, violently demanding their "rights." According to a City Journal article by Sol Stern, welfare rolls increased from 4.3 million to 10.8 million by the mid-1970s as a result, and in New York City, where the strategy had been particularly successful, "one person was on the welfare rolls... for every two working in the city's private economy."

According to another City Journal article titled "Compassion Gone Mad":

The movement's impact on New York City was jolting: welfare caseloads, already climbing 12 percent a year in the early sixties, rose by 50 percent during Lindsay's first two years; spending doubled... The city had 150,000 welfare cases in 1960; a decade later it had 1.5 million.

The vast expansion of welfare in New York City that came of the NWRO's Cloward-Piven tactics sent the city into bankruptcy in 1975. Rudy Giuliani cited Cloward and Piven by name as being responsible for "an effort at economic sabotage." He also credited Cloward-Piven with changing the cultural attitude toward welfare from that of a temporary expedient to a lifetime entitlement, an attitude which in-and-of-itself has caused perhaps the greatest damage of all.

Cloward and Piven looked at this strategy as a gold mine of opportunity. Within the newly organized groups, each offensive would find an ample pool of foot soldier recruits willing to advance its radical agenda at little or no pay, and expand its base of reliable voters, legal or otherwise. The radicals' threatening tactics also would accrue an intimidating reputation, providing a wealth of opportunities for extorting monetary and other concessions from the target organizations. In the meantime, successful offensives would create an ever increasing drag on society. As they gleefully observed:

Moreover, this kind of mass influence is cumulative because benefits are continuous. Once eligibility for basic food and rent grants is established, the drain on local resources persists indefinitely.

The next time you drive through one of the many blighted neighborhoods in our cities, or read of the astronomical crime, drug addiction, and out-of-wedlock birth rates, or consider the failed schools, strapped police and fire resources of every major city, remember Cloward and Piven's thrill that "...the drain on local resources persists indefinitely."

ACORN, the new tip of the Cloward-Piven spear

In 1970, one of George Wiley's protégés, Wade Rathke -- like Bill Ayers, a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) -- was sent to found the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now. While NWRO had made a good start, it alone couldn't accomplish the Cloward-Piven goals. Rathke's group broadened the offensive to include a wide array of low income "rights." Shortly thereafter they changed "Arkansas" to "Association of" and ACORN went nationwide.

Today ACORN is involved in a wide array of activities, including housing, voting rights, illegal immigration and other issues. According to ACORN's website: "ACORN is the nation's largest grassroots community organization of low-and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country," It is perhaps the largest radical group in the U.S. and has been cited for widespread criminal activity on many fronts.

Voting

On voting rights, ACORN and its voter mobilization subsidiary, Project Vote, have been involved nationwide in efforts to grant felons the vote and lobbied heavily for the Motor Voter Act of 1993, a law allowing people to register at motor vehicle departments, schools, libraries and other public places. That law had been sought by Cloward and Piven since the early1980s and they were present, standing behind President Clinton at the signing ceremony.

ACORN's voter rights tactics follow the Cloward-Piven Strategy:

    1. Register as many Democrat voters as possible, legal or otherwise and help them vote, multiple times if possible.

    2. Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased, random names from the phone book, even contrived names.

    3. Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards.
In this effort, ACORN sets up registration sites all over the country and has been frequently cited for turning in fraudulent registrations, as well as destroying republican applications. In the 2004-2006 election cycles alone, ACORN was accused of widespread voter fraud in 12 states. It may have swung the election for one state governor.

ACORN's website brags: "Since 2004, ACORN has helped more than 1.7 million low- and moderate-income and minority citizens apply to register to vote." Project vote boasts 4 million. I wonder how many of them are dead? For the 2008 cycle, ACORN and Project Vote have pulled out all the stops. Given their furious nationwide effort, it is not inconceivable that this presidential race could be decided by fraudulent votes alone.

Barack Obama ran ACORN's Project Vote in Chicago and his highly successful voter registration drive was credited with getting the disgraced former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun elected. Newsmax reiterates Cloward and Piven's aspirations for ACORN's voter registration efforts:

By advocating massive, no-holds-barred voter registration campaigns, they [Cloward & Piven] sought a Democratic administration in Washington, D.C. that would re-distribute the nation's wealth and lead to a totalitarian socialist state.

Illegal Immigration

As I have written elsewhere, the Radical Left's offensive to promote illegal immigration is "Cloward-Piven on steroids." ACORN is at the forefront of this movement as well, and was a leading organization among a broad coalition of radical groups, including Soros' Open Society Institute, the Service Employees International Union (ACORN founder Wade Rathke also runs a SEIU chapter), and others, that became the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. CCIR fortunately failed to gain passage for the 2007 illegal immigrant amnesty bill, but its goals have not changed.

The burden of illegal immigration on our already overstressed welfare system has been widely documented. Some towns in California have even been taken over by illegal immigrant drug cartels. The disease, crime and overcrowding brought by illegal immigrants places a heavy burden on every segment of society and every level of government, threatening to split this country apart at the seams. In the meantime, radical leftist efforts to grant illegal immigrants citizenship guarantee a huge pool of new democrat voters. With little border control, terrorists can also filter in.

Obama aided ACORN as their lead attorney in a successful suit he brought against the Illinois state government to implement the Motor Voter law there. The law had been resisted by Republican Governor Jim Edgars, who feared the law was an opening to widespread vote fraud.

His fears were warranted as the Motor Voter law has since been cited as a major opportunity for vote fraud, especially for illegal immigrants, even terrorists. According to the Wall Street Journal: "After 9/11, the Justice Department found that eight of the 19 hijackers were registered to vote..."

ACORN's dual offensives on voting and illegal immigration are handy complements. Both swell the voter rolls with reliable democrats while assaulting the country ACORN seeks to destroy with overwhelming new problems.

Mortgage Crisis

And now we have the mortgage crisis, which has sent a shock wave through Wall Street and panicked world financial markets like no other since the stock market crash of 1929. But this is a problem created in Washington long ago. It originated with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), signed into law in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. The CRA was Carter's answer to a grassroots activist movement started in Chicago, and forced banks to make loans to low income, high risk customers. PhD economist and former Texas Senator Phil Gramm has called it: "a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks."

ACORN aggressively sought to expand loans to low income groups using the CRA as a whip. Economist Stan Leibowitz wrote in the New York Post:

In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of "redlining"-claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation.

In fact, minority mortgage applications were rejected more frequently than other applications-but the overwhelming reason wasn't racial discrimination, but simply that minorities tend to have weaker finances.

ACORN showed its colors again in 1991, by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA. Obama represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 1994 suit against redlining. Most significant of all, ACORN was the driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton Administration that greatly expanded the CRA and laid the groundwork for the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac borne financial crisis we now confront. Barack Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort. With this new authority, ACORN used its subsidiary, ACORN Housing, to promote subprime loans more aggressively.

As a New York Post article describes it:

A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.

Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.

Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with "100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don't report it on your tax returns." Credit counseling is required, of course.

Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed "the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted." That lender's $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003.

The lender they were speaking of was Countrywide, which specialized in subprime lending and had a working relationship with ACORN.

Investor's Business Daily added:

The revisions also allowed for the first time the securitization of CRA-regulated loans containing subprime mortgages. The changes came as radical "housing rights" groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans. ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama. (Emphasis, mine.)

Since these loans were to be underwritten by the government sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the implicit government guarantee of those loans absolved lenders, mortgage bundlers and investors of any concern over the obvious risk. As Bloomberg reported: "It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit."

And if you think Washington policy makers cared about ACORN's negative influence, think again. Before this whole mess came down, a Democrat-sponsored bill on the table would have created an "Affordable Housing Trust Fund," granting ACORN access to approximately $500 million in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac revenues with little or no oversight.

Even now, unbelievably -- on the brink of national disaster -- Democrats have insisted ACORN benefit from bailout negotiations! Senator Lindsay Graham reported last night (9/25/08) in an interview with Greta Van Susteren of On the Record that Democrats want 20 percent of the bailout money to go to ACORN!

This entire fiasco represents perhaps the pinnacle of ACORN's efforts to advance the Cloward-Piven Strategy and is a stark demonstration of the power they wield in Washington.

Enter Barack Obama

Obama Flow Chart.jpg

In attempting to capture the significance of Barack Obama's Radical Left connections and his relation to the Cloward Piven strategy, I constructed following flow chart. It is by no means complete. There are simply too many radical individuals and organizations to include them all here. But these are perhaps the most significant.

The chart puts Barack Obama at the epicenter of an incestuous stew of American radical leftism. Not only are his connections significant, they practically define who he is. Taken together, they constitute a who's who of the American radical left, and guiding all is the Cloward-Piven strategy.

Conspicuous in their absence are any connections at all with any other group, moderate, or even mildly leftist. They are all radicals, firmly bedded in the anti-American, communist, socialist, radical leftist mesh.

Saul Alinsky

Most people are unaware that Barack Obama received his training in "community organizing" from Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. But he did. In and of itself that marks his heritage and training as that of a radical activist. One really needs go no further. But we have.

Bill Ayers

Obama objects to being associated with SDS bomber Bill Ayers, claiming he is being smeared with "guilt by association." But they worked together at the Woods Fund. The Wall Street Journal added substantially to our knowledge by describing in great detail Obama's work over five years with SDS bomber Bill Ayers on the board of a non-profit, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, to push a radical agenda on public school children. As Stanley Kurtz states:

"...the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago."

Also included in the mix is Theresa Heinz Kerry's favorite charity, the Tides Foundation. A partial list of Tides grants tells you all you need to know: ACLU, ACORN, Center for American Progress, Center for Constitutional Rights (a communist front,) CAIR, Earth Justice, Institute for Policy Studies (KGB spy nest), National Lawyers Guild (oldest communist front in U.S.), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and practically every other radical group there is. ACORN's Wade Rathke runs a Tides subsidiary, the Tides Center.

Carl Davidson and the New Party

We have heard about Bomber Bill, but we hear little about fellow SDS member Carl Davidson. According to Discover the Networks, Davidson was an early supporter of Barack Obama and a prominent member of Chicago's New Party, a synthesis of CPUSA members, Socialists, ACORN veterans and other radicals. Obama sought and received the New Party's endorsement, and they assisted with his campaign. The New Party also developed a strong relationship with ACORN. As an excellent article on the New Party observes: "Barack Obama knew what he was getting into and remains an ideal New Party candidate."

George Soros

The chart also suggests the reason for George Soros' fervent support of Obama. The President of his Open Society Institute is Aryeh Neier, founder of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). As mentioned above, three other former SDS members had extensive contact with Obama: Bill Ayers, Carl Davidson and Wade Rathke. Surely Aryeh Neier would have heard from his former colleagues of the promising new politician. More to the point, Neier is firmly committed to supporting the hugely successful radical organization, ACORN, and would be certain to back their favored candidate, Barack Obama.

ACORN

Obama has spent a large portion of his professional life working for ACORN or its subsidiaries, representing ACORN as a lawyer on some of its most critical issues, and training ACORN leaders. Stanley Kurtz's excellent National Review article, "Inside Obama's Acorn." also describes Obama's ACORN connection in detail. But I can't improve on Obama's own words:

I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career (emphasis added). Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work. - Barack Obama, Speech to ACORN, November 2007 (Courtesy Newsmax.)

In another excellent article on Obama's ACORN connections, Newsmax asks a nagging question:

It would be telling to know if Obama, during his years at Columbia, had occasion to meet Cloward and study the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

I ask you, is it possible ACORN would train Obama to take leadership positions within ACORN without telling him what he was training for? Is it possible ACORN would put Obama in leadership positions without clueing him into what his purpose was?? Is it possible that this most radical of organizations would put someone in charge of training its trainers, without him knowing what it was he was training them for?

As a community activist for ACORN; as a leadership trainer for ACORN; as a lead organizer for ACORN's Project Vote; as an attorney representing ACORN's successful efforts to impose Motor Voter regulations in Illinois; as ACORN's representative in lobbying for the expansion of high risk housing loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to the current crisis; as a recipient of their assistance in his political campaigns -- both with money and campaign workers; it is doubtful that he was unaware of ACORN's true goals. It is doubtful he was unaware of the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

Fast-forward to 2005 when an obsequious, servile and scraping Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus swearing in ceremony for newly-elected Illinois Senator, Barack Obama. Mudd called, the Congressional Black Caucus "our family" and "the conscience of Fannie Mae."

In 2005, Republicans sought to rein in Fannie and Freddie. Senator John McCain was at the forefront of that effort. But it failed due to an intense lobbying effort put forward by Fannie and Freddie.

In his few years as a U.S. senator, Obama has received campaign contributions of $126,349, from Fannie and Freddie, second only to the $165,400 received by Senator Chris Dodd, who has been getting donations from them since 1988. What makes Obama so special?

His closest advisers are a dirty laundry list of individuals at the heart of the financial crisis: former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson; Former Fannie Mae CEO and former Clinton Budget Director Frank Raines; and billionaire failed Superior Bank of Chicago Board Chair Penny Pritzker.

Johnson had to step down as adviser on Obama's V.P. search after this gem came out:

An Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) report[1] from September 2004 found that, during Johnson's tenure as CEO, Fannie Mae had improperly deferred $200 million in expenses. This enabled top executives, including Johnson and his successor, Franklin Raines, to receive substantial bonuses in 1998.[2] A 2006 OFHEO report[3] found that Fannie Mae had substantially under-reported Johnson's compensation. Originally reported as $6-7 million, Johnson actually received approximately $21 million.

Obama denies ties to Raines but the Washington Post calls him a member of "Obama's political circle." Raines and Johnson were fined $3 million by the Office of Federal Housing Oversight for their manipulation of Fannie books. The fine is small change however, compared to the $50 million Raines was able to obtain in improper bonuses as a result of juggling the books.

Most significantly, Penny Pritzker, the current Finance Chairperson of Obama's presidential campaign helped develop the complicated investment bundling of subprime securities at the heart of the meltdown. She did so in her position as shareholder and board chair of Superior Bank. The Bank failed in 2001, one of the largest in recent history, wiping out $50 million in uninsured life savings of approximately 1,400 customers. She was named in a RICO class action law suit but doesn't seem to have come out of it too badly.

As a young attorney in the 1990s, Barack Obama represented ACORN in Washington in their successful efforts to expand Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) authority. In addition to making it easier for ACORN groups to force banks into making risky loans, this also paved the way for banks like Superior to package mortgages as investments, and for the Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite them. These changes created the conditions that ultimately lead to the current financial crisis.

Did they not know this would occur? Were these smart people, led by a Harvard graduate, unaware of the Econ 101 concept of moral hazard that would result from the government making implicit guarantees to underwrite private sector financial risk? They should have known that freeing the high-risk mortgage market of risk, calamity was sure to ensue. I think they did.

Barack Obama, the Cloward-Piven candidate, no matter how he describes himself, has been a radical activist for most of his political career. That activism has been in support of organizations and initiatives that at their heart seek to tear the pillars of this nation asunder in order to replace them with their demented socialist vision. Their influence has spread so far and so wide that despite their blatant culpability in the current financial crisis, they are able to manipulate Capital Hill politicians to cut them into $140 billion of the bailout pie!

God grant those few responsible yet remaining in Washington, DC the strength to prevent this massive fraud from occurring. God grant them the courage to stand up in the face of this Marxist tidal wave.

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Jim Simpson is a former White House staff economist and budget analyst. His writings have been published in American Thinker, Washington Times, FrontPage Magazine, DefenseWatch, Soldier of Fortune and others. His blog is Truth and Consequences.

Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

10/07/2008

President Barack Hussein Obama

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I want to thank all of the loyal readers here for your love of country. We are living in troubling times, and your valuable insights and supportive comments have served to educate, and have been a source of uplift and comfort for me, and I am sure for others who have read your words here.

If I have neglected to respond to any of your comments, it has never been an intentional oversight, but simply because none of us seems to have enough hours in the day to do all that we should or would like. Please accept my apologies for any such oversights, and my gratitude for sharing your opinions and sources of information here.

This will probably be my last column before the election of 2008. I will not go into specifics regarding my claims in this essay, simply because the facts that back up my assertions have already been presented here on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed countless times in previous essays, written by me and AADB’s team members, over the past few months. I urge any new readers here to scroll down the list of essays and read those that may be of interest. There is much to be learned, and there are many links provided that steer the readers to source material and further research outlets.
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Barring a miracle of God (and why would He favor us, when we have made it illegal to even utter his name in the public square?), America is about to elect a President who not only will not represent, but who despises, the regular readers of this weblog.

Barack Obama has spent his entire adult life encouraging, and working toward, the establishment of an entitlement state, where the rich get poorer, and the poor get richer on the back of the working class. He will see to it that the already-dismembered United States Constitution is shredded beyond recognition, and beyond repair, by implementing a rule by elite that sees the redistribution of wealth and power as its highest calling. And that redistribution will be accomplished through an incessant focus on the concept of fairness – a term whose definition will be the sole responsibility of the elite class.

There is no more subjective term in the English language.

Listen for that word … fairness … in political rhetoric. You will find that it is almost exclusively used by leftists. It is a term that seeks definition by someone who intends to level a playing field. And leftists see themselves as the Great Levelers, whose destiny it is to both define and accomplish fairness, at the point of a gun if need be.

Those of you who are Christians ... pick up any Bible concordance. Look up the word fairness and count the number of times it appears in His word.

It appears once:

    Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair. (Colossians 4:1)
You and I, dear reader, will be forced at the point of a gun to buy for others ‘less fortunate’ -- as defined by the ruling elite -- homes, health insurance, food, and all manner of other ‘necessities’ -- also as defined by the ruling elite -- that the new Constitution (whether written or merely understood) will deem everyman’s right.

Our soon-to-be President has longtime, deep personal and ideological ties with anti-American mentors, Marxist ideologues, and terrorist sympathizers. His beliefs and his agenda were largely forged by those ties.

But any mention during the campaign of said ties is, of course, mean-spirited. And mean-spirited is something that no one wants to be considered in Amerika 2008.

Yet by my own personal perspective, all of the above ‘sins’ are trumped by one less frequently reported one. It is not considered an issue of urgency by most Americans, and yet, even more than his stand on any other issue, I believe it goes to the heart of the man who will lead us, so I ask you to allow me my momentary diversion:

    In 2001, while serving in the Illinois senate, Barack Obama was the only senator to speak out in opposition to a bill that would have banned the practice of leaving premature babies to die ... babies who were ‘unfortunate’ enough to be born alive after an abortion attempt.

    The bill was short and carefully worded in unambiguous language. It applied only to premature babies, already born alive, and there was no way it could be interpreted so as to limit a woman’s ‘right’ to abortion.

    Under the bill, babies born alive during an attempted abortion would have to be treated just like every other baby that is born alive or prematurely — not left to die a tortuous death, but given treatment according to an acting physician’s medical judgment as to what is necessary and what is possible — just as would apply to any other human being.

    In the end, and inarguably as a result of his arguments against the bill, Barack Obama and eleven other senators voted ‘present’ in a strategy they had conceived along with Planned Parenthood lobbyists. ‘Present’ votes in the Illinois senate are tallied as ‘no’ votes. Despite his objections, and his cowardice in voting ‘present’, the bill sailed through the senate supported by a bipartisan majority.
I offer no explanation as to why I consider his objection to this bill, and his ‘present’ vote, to be the most telling statement of his political career. But I ask every reader here to reflect on his actions and draw your own conclusions.

The American economy and the free market system are verging on collapse. Barack Obama, through his deep and longstanding connections with organizations such as ACORN, his ‘community activism’ (read: inciting minority/low-income groups to demand increasingly more money and special favors from government), and his embracing of Marxist doctrine, has played a pivotal role in bringing this crisis about.

John McCain warned the senate as early as three years ago that there was an economic crisis-in-the-making, and Barack Obama and his cadre of left-leaning power brokers – Senators Dodd and Reid, and Congressman Frank chief among them – succeeded in stifling McCain’s voice.

Yet the American electorate, fearful for their economic future, have allowed themselves to be indoctrinated into the belief that democrats can handle economic issues better than republicans.

Adolf Hitler believed, and urged his ministers of propaganda to always remember, that the receptivity of the masses is limited, their intelligence is small, and they respond well to slogans. The italicized sentence above would have made him proud!

And this simple slogan will prove to be what heralds Barack Obama’s ascension to the Presidency of the United States, and leader of the free world.

With few exceptions, the mainstream media do not talk of Obama’s dark past, or his largely hidden present. And they label as intolerant, racist, or mean-spirited, anyone who does. Yet, thanks to the internet, the truth is out there, for anyone to discover who is concerned enough to seek it.

The large majority of the American electorate prefer not to know, to embrace the mean-spirited charges made against the truth-tellers, and to spend their time in more enjoyable pursuits than doing their own research in order to distinguish truth from lies, and in order to uncover information that the media would prefer remained buried.

The legacy that our Founders left us contained a stern, drumbeat-repeated warning … expressed in all of their speeches and writings: that, above all else, we must seek to be informed and well-acquainted with the enemies of liberty. Without vigilance, liberty cannot long endure.

Echoing their pleas, one hundred and seventy years ago, Abraham Lincoln warned:

    At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
And yet, because American parents no longer seek to instill a sense of civic duty in their children … because we have handed over our public education system to left-leaning academics who refuse to teach our children a knowledge of, and sense of pride in, their proud ancestry ... because we continue to allow our population to be invaded and infiltrated by illegal immigrants, most of whom bear no allegiance to our republic ... and because the average American is more interested in being entertained and accumulating creature comforts than he is in holding his leaders accountable, we have succeeded in burying our Founders’ warnings in a cacophony of meaningless noise.

It will not be the specter of Islamic fascism that pounds the final nail into America’s coffin. Nor will it be the economic cataclysm that results from our abandoning the concepts of personal responsibility, limited government and the free market system.

It will be the ignorance and apathy of the American people that bring our beloved republic to her knees.

We owe our Founders, and our children, better.

~ joanie