Comrade Obama?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
10/31/2008
If Barack Obama is not a socialist, he does the best imitation of one I've ever seen.
Under his tax plan, the top 5 percent of wage-earners have their income tax rates raised from 35 percent to 40 percent, while the bottom 40 percent of all wage-earners, who pay no income tax, are sent federal checks.
If this is not the socialist redistribution of wealth, what is it?
A steeply graduated income tax has always been the preferred weapon of the left for bringing about socialist equality. Indeed, in the "Communist Manifesto" of 1848, Karl Marx was himself among the first to call for "a heavy progressive or graduated income tax."
The Obama tax plan is pure Robin Hood class warfare: Use the tax power of the state to rob the successful and reward the faithful. Only in Sherwood Forest it was assumed the Sheriff of Nottingham and his crowd had garnered their wealth by other than honest labor.
"Spread the wealth," Barack admonished Joe the Plumber.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," said old Karl in 1875. When Barbara West of WFTV in Orlando, Fla., put the Marx quote to Biden, however, Joe recoiled in spluttering disbelief.
West: "You may recognize this famous quote: 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.' That's from Karl Marx. How is Sen. Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?"
Biden: "Are you joking? Is this a joke?"
Biden's better defense, however, might have be the "Tu quoque!" retort: "You, too!" -- the time-honored counter-charge of hypocrisy.
Indeed, how do Republicans who call Obama a socialist explain their support for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare and the Earned Income Tax Credit? What are these if not government-mandated transfers of wealth to the middle and working class, and the indigent and working poor?
Since August, the Bush-Paulson team has seized our biggest S&L, Washington Mutual, and largest insurance company, AIG. It has nationalized Fannie and Freddie, pumped scores of billions into our banks, bailed out GM, Ford and Chrysler, and paid the $29 billion dowry for Bear Stearns to enter its shotgun marriage with JPMorgan Chase.
And with federal, state and local taxes taking a third of gross domestic product, and government regulating businesses with wage-and-hour laws, civil rights laws, environmental laws, and occupational health and safety laws, what are we living under, if not a mixed socialist-capitalist system?
Norman Thomas is said to have quit running for president on the Socialist ticket after six campaigns because the Democratic Party had stolen all his ideas and written them into its platforms.
Did Ike repeal the New Deal? Did Richard Nixon roll back the Great Society? Nope. He funded the Great Society. Did Ronald Reagan cut federal spending? Nope, defense spending soared. Bill Clinton slashed defense, but George Bush II set social spending records with No Child Left Behind and prescription drug benefits for the elderly under Medicare. Surpluses vanished, deficits returned, the national debt almost doubled.
Is the old republic then dead and gone, in the irretrievable past? Are we engaged in an argument settled before we were born?
In his 1938 essay "The Revolution Was," Garet Garrett wrote:
"There are those who think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of the Depression, singing songs to freedom."
Nevertheless, there is a difference not just of degree but of kind between unemployment compensation for jobless workers, welfare for destitute families, and confiscating the income of taxpayers who earned it -- to hand out to chronic tax consumers who did not.
This last is the socialism Winston Churchill called "the philosophy of envy and gospel of greed." And it is this suggestion of socialist ideology in Obama's words that has produced the belated pause by a nation that seemed to be moving into his camp. What did Barack say in 2001?
He spoke of the inadequacy of the courts as institutions to bring about "redistributive change" in society, of the "tragedy" of the civil rights movement in losing sight of the "political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change."
Normal people don't talk like that. Socialists do.
This is ideology speaking. This is the redistributionist drivel one hears from cosseted college radicals and the "Marxist professors" Obama says in his memoir he sought out at the university. It is the language of social parasites like William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Father Pfleger.
Enforced egalitarianism entails the death of excellence. For it seizes the rewards that excellence earns and turns them over to politicians and bureaucrats for distribution to the mediocrities upon whose votes they depend. One need not be Ayn Rand to see that Barack has picked up from past associates utopian notions that have ever produced nightmare states.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, "The Death of the West,", "The Great Betrayal," "A Republic, Not an Empire" and "Where the Right Went Wrong."
Monday, November 03, 2008
Comrade Obama?
Sunday, November 02, 2008
The National Republican Trust PAC Ads
Obama and Wright: He Never Complained Once
Barack Obama: The Redistributor
Obama Wants Social Security for Illegals
Obama's Plan: Driver's Licenses for Illegals
Obama for Illegal Alien Driver's Licenses — Philadelphia Debate
Obama for Illegal Alien Driver's Licenses — Las Vegas Debate
The Jewish Argument for John McCain By Steven L. Friedman and Myles H. Tanenbaum
Source: http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/17475/
October 30, 2008
When Jewish voters go to the polls on Election Day 2008, they have critical choices to make: which party's candidates will best protect America from terrorism; best protect Israel from terrorism; and most effectively grow this economy.
Today's Democratic Party is not the same party of your parents and grandparents. It is the party of George Soros, their leading donor, who is hostile to Israel. It is the party of Jimmy Carter, who chairs Democrats Abroad and is renowned for his hostility to Israel, and it is a party that no longer has room for Joe Lieberman. The Democrats have strayed far from their traditions of Truman, John F. Kennedy and Scoop Jackson.
 |
| Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama |
John McCain's 25-year voting record supporting Israel is unparalleled. He has co-sponsored dozens of pieces of legislation critical to the pro-Israel effort, including the Kyl-Lieberman resolution to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, the Palestinian Anti-Terror Act and the Iran Freedom Support Act. He has never, and will never, morally equate terror attacks and Israel's responses to those attacks.
In contrast, Sen. Barack Obama opposed Kyl-Lieberman and is committed to a presidential meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad without preconditions, and has also committed to a presidential summit with heads of state in Muslim nations while excluding Israel.
Obama has a naive worldview, which reflects his lack of judgment and how ill prepared he is to serve as president. McCain is ready to be commander in chief on day one of his presidency. In contrast, Obama has relied on Middle East advisers, such as Gen. Tony McPeak and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who manifest profound hostility toward Israel. Other advisers such as Dennis Ross are the architects of the profoundly flawed Oslo Strategy, which President Bill Clinton pushed to the severe detriment of Israel, even after it was clear that Yasser Arafat was an unrepentant terrorist seeking the ultimate destruction of Israel, a fact that Ariel Sharon and most Israelis clearly understood.
McCain has stood up to the leadership of his own party when he thought it necessary. Particularly noteworthy was his call for the successful "surge" in Iraq. He is a man who has worked across party lines and has a demonstrated track record of doing so. Sen. Obama has never, not once, challenged his party's leadership on any key issue or demonstrated an ability to work across the political aisle. Nor has he one legislative accomplishment he can claim in the United States Senate.
Beyond foreign policy, McCain has the experience, judgment and ingenuity to lead America in its domestic challenges.
He is a fiscal conservative who understands that small businesses are the economic engines that create 70 percent of the jobs in our economy, and that lowering taxes, particularly in a difficult economic environment, is the way to promote and restore job growth. He will continue to promote free trade, which will also benefit American business and help enhance our diplomatic efforts while Obama opposes free trade, wants to repeal NAFTA and opposes a free trade agreement with Colombia.
McCain's position on tax cuts and the need to create the conditions for economic recovery are clear-cut and correct. Obama's plan is intended to ultimately punish entrepreneurs and job creators, which historically has prolonged recessions and reduced tax revenues.
Looking to the future, John McCain's energy independence plan outlines a market-based approach that will lead to workable alternatives to petroleum and not repeat the expensive mistakes of government-mandated solutions. He had the courage of his convictions to state in Iowa that ethanol subsidies were wrong for America. Once again, he placed his country first, ahead of political self-interest.
Elections are about choices, and Jewish voters are encouraged to make a wise one for foreign policy realism in a very dangerous world, for domestic reforms that work for our nation and for individuals -- and for a respected, tested American hero. For people who recognize America's security and economic challenges, and the rising threats to Israel, the choice is clear.
Steven L. Friedman and Myles H. Tanenbaum are co-chairmen of the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Obituary - Thompson
Source: http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/223-10292008-1612751.html
October 29, 2008 12:00 AM
ELEANOR M. THOMPSON
Marlton, NJ resident
Eleanor M. Thompson (nee Highfield), age 72, of Marlton and formerly of Bordentown, passed away on October 27, 2008.
Beloved wife of the late James D. Griggs and former wife of Russell A. Thompson. Loving mother of John Griggs (Anna) of Kennett Sq., PA, Cynthia Rockwell (Daniel) of Elizabethtown, PA, James Griggs (Mary Anne) of Franklinville, Michael Thompson (Melissa) of Atco and Dorothy Daly (Joseph) of Marlton. Devoted grandmother of nine.
Mrs. Thompson retired from the Human Resources Dept. of Strawbridge and Clothier in Philadelphia.
Relatives and friends are invited to the viewing: 7 to 9 PM, Wednesday and 9 to 10 AM, Thursday at BRADLEY FUNERAL HOME, Rt. 73 and Evesham Rd., Marlton, and to the Funeral Service: 10 AM, Thursday at the Funeral Home. Interment: private.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to Samaritan Hospice, 5 Eves Dr, Marlton, NJ 08053 or to Hope United Methodist Church/Emergency Fund, PO Box 194, Voorhees, NJ 08043.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
On Foreign Policy, It's Ace Vs. Amateur
Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=310345869339384
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, October 31, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: In foreign policy, John McCain talks experience, and Barack Obama promises change. The latter gets support abroad, but his old and amateurish ideas are less likely to effect change than his cutting-edge rival's.
IBD Series: Obama vs. McCain — The Great Divide
Assuming both candidates intend to advance U.S. interests abroad, it bears looking at how McCain and Obama would conduct foreign policy, , that everyday diplomacy that affects how the U.S. is viewed and can influence other states.
McCain is the ace in foreign policy, not the much-applauded Obama. McCain has played pivotal roles in opening Vietnam to trade, passing the North American Free Trade Agreement and encouraging the color revolutions of Eastern Europe. He's visited most countries and knows that foreign policy works by keeping one's word first, not by projecting an ideology or personality. It will work.
Obama, by contrast, shows neither interest nor experience in foreign affairs, and defers to 300 advisers, mostly from left-wing think tanks. In the Senate, he's done nothing. He's recently traveled only to the warhorse trails of foreign policy in Europe and the Middle East, and not the emerging new democracies visited by McCain. It's inadequate and won't work.
Both candidates say they will work with partners. But how will their ideas play out?
For Obama, multilateral cooperation means reliance on the United Nations, even as dictators run U.N. operations for their own ends and the Security Council is deadlocked in the face of real threats. He'll get rolled because the U.N. system is institutionally weak.
For McCain, cooperation means supporting friends and recognizing enemies. In that realism, he proposes a new league of democracies to give free states a stronger voice. In advocating this, America increases its pool of like-minded allies to work with.
Obama, by contrast, blurs distinctions between friends and enemies. He discards coordination with allies in favor of going it alone with enemies. Example: His suggestion that he would press Iran to end its nuclear program by talking directly to its tyrants, never mind the coordinated effort with Europe now in place.
To allies, that comes across as arrogant, a faith in one's own charisma trumping the coordinated pressure. Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already recognized its amateurism, hitting Obama with preconditions of his own for talks, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy decried Obama as "utterly immature" with "formulations empty of all content," Haaretz reported.
Obama showed the same careless disregard for allies in saying he would break the NAFTA treaty and rewrite it on his own terms, alarming not only Mexico and Canada, but other partners too.
McCain, however, grasps how foreign policy comes of consensus and spans administrations. Getting NAFTA took consensus — not only of Republicans and Democrats in Congress, but their equivalents in Mexico and Canada. He sees it to be built on, not dropped.
On human rights, both candidates say yes, and McCain has a long record to back it up. But Obama has a different point of view. Already he is using it as a weapon against America's allies, pointing the bony finger at Colombia on human rights and denying it free trade. At the same time, he downplays the atrocious human rights record of Cuba and says he will hold talks with its dictators. McCain keeps friends encouraged and enemies on notice — his rapid stance in defense of invaded Georgia last August was typical.
On global poverty, both vow to end it, but Obama's approach is outdated: doubling aid to $50 billion, as if welfare ends poverty instead of institutionalizes it. McCain proposes partnerships and trade treaties so that the poor can rise up through opportunity.
Obama's focus on personality also may affect the sinews of U.S. power — his congressional allies are proposing cutting military spending by 25%. With no military to back his plans, it's naive to think personality will trump a capacity to project power abroad.
McCain believes in the one U.S. policy that history shows has always worked: speaking softly and carrying a big stick. If defense is strong, the need to use force is low.
Only McCain's ideas are likely to enhance America's leverage and prestige abroad. Obama's proposals were last tried during the Jimmy Carter era; they left America at the nadir of its global influence. Obama's inexperience is why he defaults to such old ideas. McCain shows that experience gives you a cutting-edge awareness of what works.
Obama-Farrakhan Ties Are Close, Ex-Farrakhan Aide Says By Kenneth R. Timmerman
Source: http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/farrakhan_obama_islam/2008/11/01/146685.html
Saturday, November 1, 2008 2:59 PM
A former top deputy to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan tells Newsmax that Barack Obama’s ties to the black nationalist movement in Chicago run deep, and that for many years the two men have had “an open line between them” to discuss policy and strategy, either directly or through intermediaries.
“Remember that for years, if you were a politician in Chicago, you had to have some type of relationship with Louis Farrakhan. You had to. If you didn’t, you would be ostracized out of black Chicago,” said Dr. Vibert White Jr., who spent most of his adult life as a member and ultimately top officer of the Nation of Islam.
White broke with the group in 1995 and is now a professor of African-American history at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
White said Obama was “part of the Chicago scene” where Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. and radicals would go to each other’s events and support each other’s causes.
“Even though Chicago is the third-largest city in the country, within the black community, the political and militant nationalist community is very small. So it wouldn’t be uncommon for [Obama and Farrakhan] to show up at events together, or at least be there and communicate with each other,” White told Newsmax.
The Anti-Defamation League has denounced Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam as a “hate group.”
Farrakhan has called Jews “bloodsuckers,” “satanic” and accused them of running the slave trade. He has labeled gays as “degenerates.” In a 2006 speech, the ADL again condemned Farrakhan when he said: “These false Jews promote the filth of Hollywood that is seeding the American people and the people of the world and bringing you down in moral strength. … It's the wicked Jews the false Jews that are promoting lesbianism, homosexuality. It's wicked Jews, false Jews that make it a crime for you to preach the word of God, then they call you homophobic!"
Obama was careful to “denounce” Farrakhan’s comments – but not the man -- during the Democratic primary season earlier this year, but only after Hillary Clinton called him out for benefiting from Farrakhan’s support.
Farrakhan endorsed Obama in a videotaped speech to his followers at Mosque Miryam in Chicago in February. “You are the instruments that God is gonna use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth,” Farrakhan said.
He told the crowd that Obama was the new “messiah.” See Video: Farrakhan Endorses Obama, Calls Him Messiah.
Once the news media and the Clinton campaign got hold of those comments from Farrakhan, demands mounted from all sides that Obama “renounce” Farrakhan.
But as he has done repeatedly throughout this campaign, Obama was careful to parse his words.
“You know, I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan's anti-Semitic comments,” he said during one appearance on “Meet the Press.” “I think that they are unacceptable and reprehensible.”
Obama hastened to point out that Farrakhan had been praising him as “an African-American who seems to be bringing the country together. I obviously can't censor him, but it is not support that I sought. And we’re not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally with Minister Farrakhan.”
But Obama, once again, was less than candid.
In 1995, according to a profile of Obama that appeared in the Chicago Reader newspaper, Obama “took time off from attending campaign coffees to attend October’s Million Man March in Washington, D.C.”
At the time, Obama was running for the Illinois Senate from Chicago’s South Side, a seat he won after getting surrogates to challenge the signatures on nominating petitions for his chief rival, the incumbent Alice Palmer.
The march, which fell far short of attracting the million men it advertised, was organized by Farrakhan and by Obama’s then-pastor, the anti-white black nationalist Wright.
Obama spoke at length with the Chicago Reader upon his return from the Million Man March. “What I saw was a powerful demonstration of an impulse and need for African-American men to come together to recognize each other and affirm our rightful place in the society," he said.
“These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a ‘lock ’em up, take no prisoners’ mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress,” Obama said.
“Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn't care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing."
“Black nationalism” is a current of thought and political action in the African-American community that has been championed by the likes of Farrakhan, Wright, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and Khalid al-Mansour. Obama discussed his attraction to black nationalism at length in his 1995 memoir “Dreams of My Father.”
Obama further parsed his words in a Feb. 25, 2008, presentation to a Jewish community meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, where he insisted that Wright “does not have a close relationship with Louis Farrakhan.”
And yet, just months earlier, Wright’s Trumpet magazine gave Farrakhan its Lifetime Achievement Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award, saying that Farrakhan “truly epitomized greatness.”
That award was the fruit of a long and deep relationship between the two men, White told Newsmax. In 1984, Wright accompanied Farrakhan on his much-criticized trip to meet Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, at a time when Gadhafi was considered an enemy of the United States.
Wright also accompanied Farrakhan and Jackson to Syria in 1986, where they successfully negotiated with Syrian strongman for the release of downed American pilot Robert O. Goodman.
Obama’s Speaking Style
In addition to the ideological affinity Obama expressed for the black nationalist movement, White believes that Obama owes much of his success as a public orator to speaking techniques that Farrakhan developed over the years, and exploited for years to great success.
“If you listen to the rhetoric and you take away Obama’s political jargon, you hear a religious tenor to it that is very much Nation of Islam-like. I don’t know if anyone has ever touched on it, but Obama’s speaking style is very Malcolm-like, very Farrakhan-like,” White said.
Any American who has listened to early radio or television interviews of Obama can hear how dramatically Obama’s speaking style has changed since he became a United States senator.
In clips dating from 2001 and even early 2004, Obama speaks haltingly and in long, rambling sentences packed with legalese and dense pseudo-academic rhetoric. But not today.
“As a former minister of the Nation of Islam, I know how they speak,” White told Newsmax. “I don’t know who was training Obama. But that style is not a ministerial style like in the Christian church. It’s a Nation of Islam style.”
White began in the late 1970s as a foot soldier in the Fruit of Islam, the military branch of Farrakhan’s Black Muslim group, then rose to become a minister of the Nation of Islam and a top deputy to Farrakhan himself.
Known initially as Brother Vibert L.X., and later as Minister V.L. Muhammad, he parted ways with Farrakhan not long after the Million Man March, after nearly 25 years within the organization.
White’s 2002 book “Inside the Nation of Islam” prompted death threats by Farrakhan loyalists, so he left Illinois and moved to Florida to teach at the University of Central Florida.
He told Newsmax that Obama’s remarkable speaking style, even his manner of standing at a podium to appear larger than life, is directly copied from Farrakhan.
“If the Nation of Islam can’t do anything else, it can train people how to speak. And nobody can outspeak a Muslim minister,” he said.
Earlier this year, a pro-Clinton blog run by former CIA officer Larry Johnson unearthed a 2004 photograph showing Michelle Obama and Farrakahn’s wife, Mother Khadijah Farrakhan, at an event hosted by Jackson’s Citizenship Education Foundation.
Newsmax queried Obama’s U.S. Senate office, his Chicago office and his campaign press office about his ties to Farrakhan, but did not receive a reply.
Ever since he appeared before the annual policy conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee in June, Obama has attempted to convince the Jewish community that he is pro-Israel.
But his longstanding ties to Farrakhan, Wright and Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi, among others, have disturbed many Jewish community leaders.
Sen. John McCain publicly chastised The Los Angeles Times on Thursday for not releasing a videotape the newspaper said it possessed of a 2003 dinner for Khalidi, where Obama reportedly accused Israel of carrying out a “genocide” against the Palestinians.
