For Returning Our Planet To Its Pristine And Natural State Of Being
(Based on the Essay “A Modest Proposal”, by Jonathan Swift in 1729)
Our organization, the Bastion of Urban Renewal and Progress (BURP) was founded a few years ago on the West side of Manhattan. We are dedicated to the betterment of humanity, the cleanliness of the earth and the causes of equality within and between all nations.
The organization is staffed by people from all walks of life as well as by experts in all areas of importance. We have spoken on a variety of subjects in the past and proposed many progressive solutions to the planet’s problems and dilemmas. None of the issues that we have spoken about in the past, however, has the magnitude of the issue we intend to tackle here.
All the problems on the planet can be traced to one thing – too many people. Overpopulation is depleting the planet’s resources, heating the globe to unsustainable levels, polluting the water, encroaching on the territory of the earth’s native inhabitants, causing many of them to become extinct.
The chief purveyor of these and all other planetary problems is one species – humanity. The main problem within humanity is the philosophy and economic system that has come to be known as “capitalism”.
It is capitalism, with its maddening obsession with technology and innovation, which is primarily responsible for the overpopulation of the earth by homo sapiens. The insidious technology of capitalism has created situations where babies born with birth defects now live long, healthy lives, wasting precious resources in the process. People who at one time may have lived into their 60s are now living will into their 80s, even their 90s! Thus millions of people are using resources that years ago would have been used more efficiently by the planet.
Hence, the first step in our multi-faceted plan is to rid the earth of capitalism. We must start by teaching our children at young ages not to be capitalists. The focus of schools should not be to teach disciplines such as mathematics that might encourage kids to want to create businesses or new ideas. Education should focus on kids getting along with each other and with nature. Here we applaud Barack and Michelle Obama for being so forward thinking. Both have emphasized that students should stop striving for that corner office and that big salary and instead look to serve others, to sacrifice for the betterment of society.
Unfortunately, simply leaving this up to the whims and desires of people themselves has shown to be ineffective. Humans are selfish creatures and will need to be pushed in the proper direction. Children will need to be shown how people have all but destroyed the planet in their egotistical desires to develop products and machines. These kids need to be taught how these selfish beings have found ways to grow staggering amounts of food causing an even greater increase in the population. Everything associated with capitalism seems to cause more people while increasing the longevity of the ones already here! This evil must be stopped.
What is needed is de-industrialization which can only come about by a cataclysmic change in the ways people think about their lives. The symbols of industrialization are all around us -- big tall buildings, air conditioners, cars, cell phones, ipods, ipads, blackberries, kindles, plasma TVs, HD TVs, planes above us, trains below us, laptops in our backpacks, some have technology inside their bodies replacing the very organs they were born with, buses move people across town while ferries move them across rivers, people can take out a small device and read any newspaper in the world. All this must stop if the planet is to survive.
If people won’t give up these trivial things willingly, then they must be forced to do so. Currently there is a fictional worldwide war on terror. The effort that is going on in that war needs to be brought to bear on capitalism – the real enemy!
Rich people who disproportionally exploit the world’s resources must be the first target in the war on capitalism. Our experts here at our organization (BURP) feel that the predator drones currently being used in Afghanistan could be put to excellent use in this theater. Once predator drones and all their fire power is brought to bear on capitalists, they will think twice before exploiting resources.
Imagine a barbecue on a sunny 4th of July. Here is a holiday celebrating the creation of the worst capitalist offender and the most wasteful nation of all, the United States. A family of 5 is grilling the flesh of a poor animal on their grill while celebrating this heretical holiday. This family is in their backyard laughing, playing games while somewhere else in the world there is a family starving on a couple of grains of rice. The capitalistic family has a huge back yard all to itself while somewhere else in the world there is a small room with 18 people living in squalor. But justice is done when the predator drone comes in and eliminates this wasteful wealthy family. The war on capitalism has begun.
Yes we know it seems somewhat harsh but is there any other method that has worked? Once rich people get the message that they must give up their big homes, their swimming pools, their SUVs, their big screen TVs, their computers and internet access, their satellite radio, their running water and their sewage system, then the predator drones can stop.
Once capitalists are brought in line it will be time to take down all capitalist symbols. While it was capitalists who built these structures, they won’t be needed to take them down. Only the heavens know what methods the capitalists used to selfishly build such wasteful structures but it will be much easier to destroy them than to build them.
In a world finally free of capitalism, its technology and its buildings, the planet can start to heal. Imagine how happy the planet will be when instead of taking raw sewage and treating it with naturally occurring enzymes and chemicals to break it down and recycle it the way the capitalists did, we take it all in its raw form (both human and horse waste since there will be no cars by then) and bury tons and tons of it in the earth.
Of course, there may be an outbreak of dysentery. Typhus might also become a problem from all the raw sewage. There won’t be a lot of doctors either to cure all of this and it could turn into a full blown epidemic, the likes of which has not been seen since the bubonic plague. Water might become polluted from all the sewage as well.
But in any situation there is some give and take. While there will be no doctors, technology, drugs or hospitals to treat the dysentery and typhus outbreaks, CO2 levels in the atmosphere will go down and start the planet on its healing journey.
We here at our organization (BURP) are aware of the tragic loss of life that will occur in this future world. We feel this loss and regret it but at the same time, we know that humans are a cancer to the planet. Should we mourn the death of a cancer cell?
A scientific expert on our staff points out that there is an inverse relationship between human population and planetary health. As all the capitalist ideas are eliminated the planet will have a chance to breathe again. However, the people left will still try to eat the native inhabitants. They will still try to grow food and reclaim land in order to do so. Therefore, it may be necessary to completely eliminate the human population.
We propose a no child policy. We are caring people and do not want to be judge, jury and executioner for the people who survive the elimination of capitalism. However, they cannot be allowed to bring more people to the planet because this could start the evil cycle all over again.
Some people, those who have demonstrated a progressive, caring and forward thinking approach, will be allowed to reproduce in order to act as stewards of the planet. We here at our organization (BURP) are imminently qualified to make this decision.
We understand that many of you may have some trepidation concerning this proposal but those of you who feel that way ought to re-think your priorities. It is not right to put the perpetuation of your gene pool above the health of the planet. We have made our choice. It is either the planet or humanity and we choose the planet.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Sacrifice, Guilt And Giving Back - The Three Stooges Of Leftist Politics
There are phrases and ideas that are often accepted without question. The notion that people need to ‘give back to society’ is uttered by many people who have been successful. Athletes and actors have often expressed this idea when establishing some charity or fund that helps the communities they grew up in.
While giving to charity or setting up an organization that helps people is a noble cause, there is an inherent illogic and dangerous precedent in the phrase ‘giving back to the community’. First, the idea assumes that the community has given people something to begin with. Second, it assumes that people have a right to expect something from the community.
Barack Obama seems to be a firm believer in the ‘giving back’ idea. At various times he has spoken about people who have done well in the United States:
“They want to give back to the country that’s done so much for them. Washington just hasn’t asked them to.”
In contradiction to the previous quote, he also said about the ‘rich’:
"Their basic view is that no matter how successful I am, no matter how much I have taken from this country… Their notion is despite the fact that I have benefited from all of these investments… that somehow I have no obligation to people who are less fortunate than me. And I have no real obligation to future generations to make sure they have a better future.”
So in one comment, rich people want to give more and in the other comment he presents the rich as a bunch of selfish people who want to keep all their money. Whatever Obama actually believes about the things the rich want to do with their money, he clearly believes that it is their obligation to give more of it away to government. He said:
“This is not because we begrudge those who’ve done well – we rightly celebrate their success. Rather, it is a basic reflection of our belief that those who have benefitted most from our way of life can afford to give a bit more back. “
The idea of ‘giving back’ is a diversion. It betrays the way of thinking of people on the left as well as on people who have been successful and who feel guilty about their success. With the left it is a matter of retribution and payback while with the successful, it is a matter of guilt, which presupposes that their success is somehow immoral.
While giving to charities is a noble idea and should be encouraged, giving BACK is an abomination. The ‘community’ did not create the success of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. The ‘community’ did not make Michael Jordan a great basketball player. It is wonderful of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Michael Jordan to give their money to causes that they believe in. It is criminal if they are forced to give money to this fictitious entity called ‘community’.
Community is nothing but a euphemism for government. The whole idea of our constitutional republic is limited government. All the rights are placed in the hands of individual people. The government rules by the consent of those people. It can’t give people anything because it has nothing to give. All it can do is to take from some to give to others. The prosperity of the United States was created by individuals, not government.
Bill Gates may owe his parents and he may owe friends who inspired him. Most of all, he should feel pride in himself. He has created a company that provides millions of new jobs. He has created powerful products that people can obtain at reasonable prices that make them more productive. If anything, it is the community that owes Bill Gates, not the other way around.
‘Giving back’ is a better way of saying that paying more taxes is patriotic. Joe Biden said that rich Americans would gladly pay more:
“It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”
Biden could not be more wrong. Paying more taxes to is like giving $20 to a kid to buy milk, eggs and orange juice. After he comes back saying that he spent the $20 on video games you give him another $20. This time he comes back saying that he went to McDonalds. So you give him another $20 and he comes back and says he went to the movies. When do you stop giving him $20?
It is not patriotic to pay more taxes and it is not patriotic to give money to a government that has proven time and again that it doesn’t know what to do with that money when it has it. All the talk about having the rich pay their ‘fair share’ presupposes that if the government had that money it would use it in a more beneficial way.
Barack Obama said about Paul Ryan’s budget plan:
“There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. “
There is so much that is misleading about this statement. First of all, conservatives are not asking anyone, rich or poor to sacrifice. Obama and the left are so used to their own rhetoric that they can’t seem to think or speak without these toxic ideas seeping in to everything they say and do. If money is spent on things that are not achieving results, it is not a sacrifice to stop spending money on those things, it is common sense.
It is beneficial to everyone, rich and poor alike, to stop wasting money on union subsidies and tax breaks for unions that do not even use those tax breaks for the benefit of their own members. It is beneficial to stop spending so much money on an education system that is clearly broken. It is beneficial to look at Medicare and social security and our entire safety net system and deal with the realities of the financial mess they are in.
Another misleading idea of Obama’s statement (more of an outright lie) is the claim of a tax cut for millionaires. Republicans are proposing to keep the same rate that has been in effect for the last ten years -- that is clearly not a cut. But more important is the idea of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘giving back’. It is ironic that Obama wants to eliminate the tax cut for charitable giving. Does he really want to encourage people to ‘give back’ or does he want to have a government that has more control over the people? The idea of ‘giving back’ seems to only get its moral cache if it is forced upon individuals by an intrusive government.
Ayn Rand once asked “in a society where everybody sacrifices, who wins?” She said "The word that has destroyed you is 'sacrifice'...If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a 'sacrifice': that term brands you as immoral.” And she also said “Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man’s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values.”
Obama said: “The change we seek has always required great struggle and great sacrifice. And so this is a battle in our own hearts and minds about what kind of country we want and how hard we’re willing to work for it.” And he said “This is who we are. This is the America I know. We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investments in our people and our country. To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I’m President, we won’t.
Exactly what America does Barack Obama believe in? Is it one where the people are helpless and need his help to survive? Americans sacrifice every day. They crowd into trains at 5:30 in the morning after 4 hours of sleep in order to give their kids a better life. They don’t need lectures from Barack Obama on sacrificing. Forcing people to spend money on ideas that are inimical to the ideas of the constitution and freedom is not a sacrifice, it is theft.
While giving to charity or setting up an organization that helps people is a noble cause, there is an inherent illogic and dangerous precedent in the phrase ‘giving back to the community’. First, the idea assumes that the community has given people something to begin with. Second, it assumes that people have a right to expect something from the community.
Barack Obama seems to be a firm believer in the ‘giving back’ idea. At various times he has spoken about people who have done well in the United States:
“They want to give back to the country that’s done so much for them. Washington just hasn’t asked them to.”
In contradiction to the previous quote, he also said about the ‘rich’:
"Their basic view is that no matter how successful I am, no matter how much I have taken from this country… Their notion is despite the fact that I have benefited from all of these investments… that somehow I have no obligation to people who are less fortunate than me. And I have no real obligation to future generations to make sure they have a better future.”
So in one comment, rich people want to give more and in the other comment he presents the rich as a bunch of selfish people who want to keep all their money. Whatever Obama actually believes about the things the rich want to do with their money, he clearly believes that it is their obligation to give more of it away to government. He said:
“This is not because we begrudge those who’ve done well – we rightly celebrate their success. Rather, it is a basic reflection of our belief that those who have benefitted most from our way of life can afford to give a bit more back. “
The idea of ‘giving back’ is a diversion. It betrays the way of thinking of people on the left as well as on people who have been successful and who feel guilty about their success. With the left it is a matter of retribution and payback while with the successful, it is a matter of guilt, which presupposes that their success is somehow immoral.
While giving to charities is a noble idea and should be encouraged, giving BACK is an abomination. The ‘community’ did not create the success of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. The ‘community’ did not make Michael Jordan a great basketball player. It is wonderful of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Michael Jordan to give their money to causes that they believe in. It is criminal if they are forced to give money to this fictitious entity called ‘community’.
Community is nothing but a euphemism for government. The whole idea of our constitutional republic is limited government. All the rights are placed in the hands of individual people. The government rules by the consent of those people. It can’t give people anything because it has nothing to give. All it can do is to take from some to give to others. The prosperity of the United States was created by individuals, not government.
Bill Gates may owe his parents and he may owe friends who inspired him. Most of all, he should feel pride in himself. He has created a company that provides millions of new jobs. He has created powerful products that people can obtain at reasonable prices that make them more productive. If anything, it is the community that owes Bill Gates, not the other way around.
‘Giving back’ is a better way of saying that paying more taxes is patriotic. Joe Biden said that rich Americans would gladly pay more:
“It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”
Biden could not be more wrong. Paying more taxes to is like giving $20 to a kid to buy milk, eggs and orange juice. After he comes back saying that he spent the $20 on video games you give him another $20. This time he comes back saying that he went to McDonalds. So you give him another $20 and he comes back and says he went to the movies. When do you stop giving him $20?
It is not patriotic to pay more taxes and it is not patriotic to give money to a government that has proven time and again that it doesn’t know what to do with that money when it has it. All the talk about having the rich pay their ‘fair share’ presupposes that if the government had that money it would use it in a more beneficial way.
Barack Obama said about Paul Ryan’s budget plan:
“There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. “
There is so much that is misleading about this statement. First of all, conservatives are not asking anyone, rich or poor to sacrifice. Obama and the left are so used to their own rhetoric that they can’t seem to think or speak without these toxic ideas seeping in to everything they say and do. If money is spent on things that are not achieving results, it is not a sacrifice to stop spending money on those things, it is common sense.
It is beneficial to everyone, rich and poor alike, to stop wasting money on union subsidies and tax breaks for unions that do not even use those tax breaks for the benefit of their own members. It is beneficial to stop spending so much money on an education system that is clearly broken. It is beneficial to look at Medicare and social security and our entire safety net system and deal with the realities of the financial mess they are in.
Another misleading idea of Obama’s statement (more of an outright lie) is the claim of a tax cut for millionaires. Republicans are proposing to keep the same rate that has been in effect for the last ten years -- that is clearly not a cut. But more important is the idea of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘giving back’. It is ironic that Obama wants to eliminate the tax cut for charitable giving. Does he really want to encourage people to ‘give back’ or does he want to have a government that has more control over the people? The idea of ‘giving back’ seems to only get its moral cache if it is forced upon individuals by an intrusive government.
Ayn Rand once asked “in a society where everybody sacrifices, who wins?” She said "The word that has destroyed you is 'sacrifice'...If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a 'sacrifice': that term brands you as immoral.” And she also said “Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man’s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values.”
Obama said: “The change we seek has always required great struggle and great sacrifice. And so this is a battle in our own hearts and minds about what kind of country we want and how hard we’re willing to work for it.” And he said “This is who we are. This is the America I know. We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investments in our people and our country. To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I’m President, we won’t.
Exactly what America does Barack Obama believe in? Is it one where the people are helpless and need his help to survive? Americans sacrifice every day. They crowd into trains at 5:30 in the morning after 4 hours of sleep in order to give their kids a better life. They don’t need lectures from Barack Obama on sacrificing. Forcing people to spend money on ideas that are inimical to the ideas of the constitution and freedom is not a sacrifice, it is theft.
Friday, April 22, 2011
A Political Strategy For Conservatives
Former NFL coach of the NY Jets Herm Edwards uttered the words “You play to win the game” at a press conference in response to a question about the Jets playing “not to lose” rather than aggressively playing to win. The Edwards quote is funny in the way he says it but playing to win is not as obvious as his quote makes it seem.
In sports, there are some teams or individuals who play aggressively, trying to force their opponents into mistakes while risking mistakes themselves. Other teams don’t take chances, playing less aggressively while waiting for a mistake from their opponents that they can pounce on. Some teams try to outsmart their opponents, some use gimmicks while others try to physically intimidate.
One strategy is not necessarily better than the other. It depends on the personnel of the team and the personnel of its opponent, as well as weather conditions and other considerations. One thing is clear in sports – you find your own strength and your opponent’s weakness and try to maximize your strengths while exploiting your opponent’s weaknesses.
In U.S. politics, one of the biggest strengths of democrats vs. republicans is that the democrats get to frame the rules of the debate. This is helped by a media that is mostly made up of democrats. There are narratives and cliché’s that are accepted as absolute truths such as: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Republicans are the party of the rich and corporations while democrats are the party of the working class. Democrats care about the elderly, minorities, children, women, gays, transgender people and the physically handicapped while republicans care about the religious right and gun fanatics. Democrats are thoughtful, thinking people while republicans are back woods people ready to support war and killing in the name of blind patriotism.
Republicans need to attack these clichés at their core before they can go into specific debates about policy. As long as republicans are portrayed in this way, they will not be successful. The worst part of these clichés is that the republicans often lend credibility to the stereotypes by trying to put themselves above other republicans.
For example, when republicans use a term such as “compassionate conservatism”, they lend legitimacy to the idea that most conservatives are not compassionate. Instead of a candidate saying that as an individual, he is a compassionate conservative, the candidate needs to say that conservatism, itself, is compassionate. The candidate needs to be able to display how and why conservatism is compassionate. Before conservatives and republicans can become the political force they need to be, they have to change the take on who they are perceived to be.
Republicans are afraid to defend anything that took place during the Bush administration and that continues to be used against them. Some political strategists, no doubt making a lot of money and being experts in their field, have decided that the past is the past and that political debates must be based on a vision of the future. But when your vision of the future is consistently compared to what you have done in the past you are put in a position where you HAVE to defend the past whether you want to or not.
An honest analysis of what took place during the Bush administration would show that Bush and the republicans were the only ones who saw the impending disaster of Freddie and Fannie, along with the housing market collapse. There are democrat politicians from Barney Frank and Andrew Cuomo to Barack Obama, himself, actually on tape saying that Freddie and Fannie were not in trouble. They are on tape saying they wanted to continue the course of sub-prime loans. These are the same sub-prime loans that were the driving force behind the economic collapse.
The republicans know the complete playbook of democrats. It’s class warfare, lying about actual facts, and portraying the republicans as mean. There is no ingenuity behind that playbook. The republicans know that an 85 mile per hour straight fastball is coming straight down the center of the plate belt high but they refuse to hit it! Since they are already being sold to the public as mean, republicans are careful not to hit the ball too hard because then they might be perceived as even more mean! Yet people would respect and like republicans more if they fought for their issues rather than ran away from them.
When Barack Obama states “But I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking” -- or when Obama says that republicans have driven the car into the ditch and he is trying to get the car out -- or when he says about republicans that “they can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back”. All of these comments are based on the assumption that the Bush administration, the republican congress and the republican senate created the economic mess the U.S. is in.
When the entire strategy of the democrats is based on the idea that Bush and republicans “drove the bus into a ditch” then it is incumbent on the republicans to show that they were screaming to stop the bus while the democrats kept driving. In fact, there is a rumor that while the bus was speeding toward the cliff, it was stopped by a traffic cop but when the officer asked for a license and registration, Barack Obama chided him for being extreme. Apparently the officer let the bus go after Obama showed him an old learner’s permit from the state of Hawaii.
Obama was recently caught off camera by CBS and said “Go at it” in referring to republicans attempt to repeal his health care plan. If Obama wants a fight, the republicans should give him one. Start by isolating the lies constantly being told by the left and then attack the motivation for saying the lies, as well as the substance of the lies themselves. It can’t get done through the media and must come in a “mano a mano” challenge directly to Obama. Obama will get angry and will try to hide it by his signature smile. Nevertheless, if he is really challenged, he will come across as bitter and vengeful.
A quick word about the “Birther” issue – a friend recently applied for a job at a large financial firm. He had to provide: Proof of citizenship, A full college transcript, Allow the company to do a full credit check, Show documentation and proof of all residences for the last ten years, Copies of passport and drivers license, Get a drug test. Why does a person applying for a job at a financial institution need to show more proof than the person who has the most powerful position on earth?
The President works for the people and we have a right, actually an obligation, to make sure that he is who he says he is. In fact, we know he has a large collection of friends (too numerous to name here) who have anti-American sentiments. Is it unreasonable to ask to see what he wrote during his informative years in college, especially given who his friends are? Every other president has released his transcripts, why not Obama?
As to the birth certificate, if it has been lost then say so and tell us why. Obama has spent about 2 million dollars fighting lawsuits that want him to simply show the birth certificate. He clearly does not want to show this document. Maybe he is a citizen and maybe he isn’t but he clearly seems to be hiding something.
George Bush had about 10 minutes unaccounted for from his service in the National Guard and every media company in the world tried to find out what went on in those 10 minutes. Now we have a president who hasn’t released his medical records, college transcript and writings, and birth certificate. Where is the media curiosity? Republicans need to (pardon the expression) grow a set on this one and simply demand that Obama release these documents as all other presidents have done.
The republicans have to fight on their terms. Despite an antagonistic media, there is no need for trick plays. All republicans have to do is toss the ball down the field and they will win. There is no need to take a call on a cell phone in the middle of a news conference. Leave this kind of idiocy to the democrats. Are you listening Rudy Giuliani? Don’t insult the intelligence of the citizens of this country with silly games. State your case honestly and without fear, with humor if possible but not with gimmicks. Play to win the game.
In sports, there are some teams or individuals who play aggressively, trying to force their opponents into mistakes while risking mistakes themselves. Other teams don’t take chances, playing less aggressively while waiting for a mistake from their opponents that they can pounce on. Some teams try to outsmart their opponents, some use gimmicks while others try to physically intimidate.
One strategy is not necessarily better than the other. It depends on the personnel of the team and the personnel of its opponent, as well as weather conditions and other considerations. One thing is clear in sports – you find your own strength and your opponent’s weakness and try to maximize your strengths while exploiting your opponent’s weaknesses.
In U.S. politics, one of the biggest strengths of democrats vs. republicans is that the democrats get to frame the rules of the debate. This is helped by a media that is mostly made up of democrats. There are narratives and cliché’s that are accepted as absolute truths such as: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Republicans are the party of the rich and corporations while democrats are the party of the working class. Democrats care about the elderly, minorities, children, women, gays, transgender people and the physically handicapped while republicans care about the religious right and gun fanatics. Democrats are thoughtful, thinking people while republicans are back woods people ready to support war and killing in the name of blind patriotism.
Republicans need to attack these clichés at their core before they can go into specific debates about policy. As long as republicans are portrayed in this way, they will not be successful. The worst part of these clichés is that the republicans often lend credibility to the stereotypes by trying to put themselves above other republicans.
For example, when republicans use a term such as “compassionate conservatism”, they lend legitimacy to the idea that most conservatives are not compassionate. Instead of a candidate saying that as an individual, he is a compassionate conservative, the candidate needs to say that conservatism, itself, is compassionate. The candidate needs to be able to display how and why conservatism is compassionate. Before conservatives and republicans can become the political force they need to be, they have to change the take on who they are perceived to be.
Republicans are afraid to defend anything that took place during the Bush administration and that continues to be used against them. Some political strategists, no doubt making a lot of money and being experts in their field, have decided that the past is the past and that political debates must be based on a vision of the future. But when your vision of the future is consistently compared to what you have done in the past you are put in a position where you HAVE to defend the past whether you want to or not.
An honest analysis of what took place during the Bush administration would show that Bush and the republicans were the only ones who saw the impending disaster of Freddie and Fannie, along with the housing market collapse. There are democrat politicians from Barney Frank and Andrew Cuomo to Barack Obama, himself, actually on tape saying that Freddie and Fannie were not in trouble. They are on tape saying they wanted to continue the course of sub-prime loans. These are the same sub-prime loans that were the driving force behind the economic collapse.
The republicans know the complete playbook of democrats. It’s class warfare, lying about actual facts, and portraying the republicans as mean. There is no ingenuity behind that playbook. The republicans know that an 85 mile per hour straight fastball is coming straight down the center of the plate belt high but they refuse to hit it! Since they are already being sold to the public as mean, republicans are careful not to hit the ball too hard because then they might be perceived as even more mean! Yet people would respect and like republicans more if they fought for their issues rather than ran away from them.
When Barack Obama states “But I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking” -- or when Obama says that republicans have driven the car into the ditch and he is trying to get the car out -- or when he says about republicans that “they can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back”. All of these comments are based on the assumption that the Bush administration, the republican congress and the republican senate created the economic mess the U.S. is in.
When the entire strategy of the democrats is based on the idea that Bush and republicans “drove the bus into a ditch” then it is incumbent on the republicans to show that they were screaming to stop the bus while the democrats kept driving. In fact, there is a rumor that while the bus was speeding toward the cliff, it was stopped by a traffic cop but when the officer asked for a license and registration, Barack Obama chided him for being extreme. Apparently the officer let the bus go after Obama showed him an old learner’s permit from the state of Hawaii.
Obama was recently caught off camera by CBS and said “Go at it” in referring to republicans attempt to repeal his health care plan. If Obama wants a fight, the republicans should give him one. Start by isolating the lies constantly being told by the left and then attack the motivation for saying the lies, as well as the substance of the lies themselves. It can’t get done through the media and must come in a “mano a mano” challenge directly to Obama. Obama will get angry and will try to hide it by his signature smile. Nevertheless, if he is really challenged, he will come across as bitter and vengeful.
A quick word about the “Birther” issue – a friend recently applied for a job at a large financial firm. He had to provide: Proof of citizenship, A full college transcript, Allow the company to do a full credit check, Show documentation and proof of all residences for the last ten years, Copies of passport and drivers license, Get a drug test. Why does a person applying for a job at a financial institution need to show more proof than the person who has the most powerful position on earth?
The President works for the people and we have a right, actually an obligation, to make sure that he is who he says he is. In fact, we know he has a large collection of friends (too numerous to name here) who have anti-American sentiments. Is it unreasonable to ask to see what he wrote during his informative years in college, especially given who his friends are? Every other president has released his transcripts, why not Obama?
As to the birth certificate, if it has been lost then say so and tell us why. Obama has spent about 2 million dollars fighting lawsuits that want him to simply show the birth certificate. He clearly does not want to show this document. Maybe he is a citizen and maybe he isn’t but he clearly seems to be hiding something.
George Bush had about 10 minutes unaccounted for from his service in the National Guard and every media company in the world tried to find out what went on in those 10 minutes. Now we have a president who hasn’t released his medical records, college transcript and writings, and birth certificate. Where is the media curiosity? Republicans need to (pardon the expression) grow a set on this one and simply demand that Obama release these documents as all other presidents have done.
The republicans have to fight on their terms. Despite an antagonistic media, there is no need for trick plays. All republicans have to do is toss the ball down the field and they will win. There is no need to take a call on a cell phone in the middle of a news conference. Leave this kind of idiocy to the democrats. Are you listening Rudy Giuliani? Don’t insult the intelligence of the citizens of this country with silly games. State your case honestly and without fear, with humor if possible but not with gimmicks. Play to win the game.
Friday, April 15, 2011
The Big Government Virus
A biological virus is defined, according to Dictionary.com as: “an ultramicroscopic … metabolically inert, infectious agent that replicates only within the cells of living hosts, mainly bacteria, plants, and animals … composed of an RNA or DNA core, a protein coat, and, in more complex types, a surrounding envelope. “A computer virus is defined as “a segment of self-replicating code planted illegally in a computer program, often to damage or shut down a system or network.
There is a new type of virus known as BGV (The Big Government Virus). This is a virus that combines the maliciousness of a computer virus with the heartbreaking reality of a biological virus. BGV is similar to a computer virus in that it is caused by people and planted in hosts with purposeful intent. It is similar to a biological virus in the way it replicates itself in the body politic.
There is no cure for BGV. There is no treatment, antibiotic, or anti-virus software that will remove it once it takes hold. The virus reproduces itself on a geometric scale. The best way of dealing with this treacherous disease is to prevent it from infecting the host in the first place. Like all viruses, BGV is a parasite that needs to feed off of a living host in order to survive and spread.
The good news is that BGV is completely preventable. It requires education from a young age and continuing vigilance throughout a person’s life but as long as people are aware of the warning signs, they can prevent the infection from contaminating them and their neighbors.
Schools have started many education programs for the prevention of viruses such as AIDS. They have handed out condoms to young children and explained to these young kids how to have sex so that it is less risky. Now with this new wicked virus, young children will need to be educated to how BGV works, how it spreads and how it can be prevented.
Like many viruses, at first BGV seems harmless. Its danger is in its deceptive nature. It often fools people into thinking that it is beneficial. This is why education of BGV is so important. People first need to identify carriers of the virus. There are people who knowingly carry this virus and purposely spread it to others. Most of these people are democrat politicians. The virus works thusly:
A democrat politician such as Barack Obama will say something such as “The rich need to pay their fair share”. This is the entry point of BGV. Taxes then get raised. At this point the BGV bug takes hold. People will naturally try to prevent giving their hard earned money to the government. They may try to put it in tax shelters. So, a new government agency needs to be created in order to monitor the economic activity of citizens. A certain amount of freedom is lost as this new agency tells people how and where they can invest their money.
This new agency costs money as well. Hundreds of new IRS agents need to be hired. Therefore, the raising of taxes has an expense associated with it as a portion of the new taxes has to go into paying for the new agency.
Then the people who have to pay the extra taxes have to change their plans. Not having the money to invest the way they want, they have to cancel certain expenditures. A person planning to buy a BMW puts those plans off until the economic situation is better. Other people do the same. Soon there is extra inventory at BMW. Sales people are let go as cars are not selling.
The sales people who are let go from BMW file for unemployment. Now, instead of the government receiving taxes from all those BMW sales people, the government has to pay them unemployment checks. So the extra revenue from raising taxes now has another bill associated with it. There are less people paying taxes because less people are working and not only are there less tax payers, but the government goes from receiving money from those people to PAYING money to those people.
The trucking companies that deliver BMW cars, the mechanics that repair them, the suppliers who supply the steel, computer components, electrical equipment, and leather for the seats all let people go because demand is so low. Now the unemployment rate is really starting to rise and in an act of compassion, the unemployment insurance period is increased by six months which causes government to pay out even more money.
Now the BGV illness has completely infected the body politic. People have less money because the government is confiscating more and more. In addition, the government is telling them how and where they can invest the money they are allowed to keep. This loss of freedom and individual wealth is not offset by any gains in government revenue because whatever new money the government hoped to obtain is paid out in new expenses that didn’t exist before the tax increase.
This is only the beginning of the damage caused by the BGV virus. Not only is there a bunch of new expenses, but there isn’t any new economic growth. A person who was planning to create an extra room in his home puts those plans off because after paying the extra taxes, he doesn’t have enough money left. The construction firm that would have gotten the job and would have paid taxes on it now pays no taxes and goes out of business because no one else is adding rooms to their homes either.
The insidious virus is now in full replication mode. Politicians see the infection spreading but instead of trying to treat it, they perpetuate it with more of the same. With unemployment levels skyrocketing and debt growing, the politicians decide to create new government jobs. The people who do these jobs go off of unemployment but their very salary is still paid by other tax payers! These jobs cost money and produce little. In addition, the people who do these jobs become dependent on the very system that gave them the jobs in the first place. A vicious cycle begins as the people who work for the government become permanent perpetuators of the BGV disease!
With all the new government jobs, there is no innovation by individuals. People who may have come up with inventions and ideas that could improve the lives of others don’t have the money to invest. There is no entrepreneurialism because not only do people lack the money to invest but they also know that even if they manage to scrape up the money, come up with a great idea, work hard and have success, they still won’t get to keep the fruits of their hard work! Soon people become dependent on other countries for products because the cost of producing them here and taking risks versus the potential rewards becomes prohibitive.
At this point the BGV germs are circulating all through the body politic. The infection is severe. Debt and unemployment are high. Individual freedom is in danger. There is no growth in the economy. Opportunities are few and innovation is null. So what do the politicians do? They ask to raise taxes again! This is similar to an endless loop in the worst computer virus. A loop is a piece of computer code that repeats itself over and over until some condition is finally met to stop it. But with another rise in taxes, there is no exit to the loop as it repeats again and again while doing more damage each time it runs through. The patient, already infected with a severe case of BGV, will not survive if the loop continues to run.
Awareness of diseases is important. People have cancer walks and AIDS walks in order to prevent the spread of diseases and to raise consciousness. They remind people to see doctors and get checked for breast cancer, colon cancer and prostate cancer. The time has come for a BGV walk to create awareness and to put a definitive end to this horrific epidemic. It is now time to educate the public to the scourge known as the BGV (Big Government) virus. This self perpetuating disease has always been around in one form or another. It can be reasonably argued that this disease has caused more death and destruction than any other. The infection rate has, hitherto, been kept in check in the United States. Now the country is in danger of a BGV epidemic. It must be stopped.
There is a new type of virus known as BGV (The Big Government Virus). This is a virus that combines the maliciousness of a computer virus with the heartbreaking reality of a biological virus. BGV is similar to a computer virus in that it is caused by people and planted in hosts with purposeful intent. It is similar to a biological virus in the way it replicates itself in the body politic.
There is no cure for BGV. There is no treatment, antibiotic, or anti-virus software that will remove it once it takes hold. The virus reproduces itself on a geometric scale. The best way of dealing with this treacherous disease is to prevent it from infecting the host in the first place. Like all viruses, BGV is a parasite that needs to feed off of a living host in order to survive and spread.
The good news is that BGV is completely preventable. It requires education from a young age and continuing vigilance throughout a person’s life but as long as people are aware of the warning signs, they can prevent the infection from contaminating them and their neighbors.
Schools have started many education programs for the prevention of viruses such as AIDS. They have handed out condoms to young children and explained to these young kids how to have sex so that it is less risky. Now with this new wicked virus, young children will need to be educated to how BGV works, how it spreads and how it can be prevented.
Like many viruses, at first BGV seems harmless. Its danger is in its deceptive nature. It often fools people into thinking that it is beneficial. This is why education of BGV is so important. People first need to identify carriers of the virus. There are people who knowingly carry this virus and purposely spread it to others. Most of these people are democrat politicians. The virus works thusly:
A democrat politician such as Barack Obama will say something such as “The rich need to pay their fair share”. This is the entry point of BGV. Taxes then get raised. At this point the BGV bug takes hold. People will naturally try to prevent giving their hard earned money to the government. They may try to put it in tax shelters. So, a new government agency needs to be created in order to monitor the economic activity of citizens. A certain amount of freedom is lost as this new agency tells people how and where they can invest their money.
This new agency costs money as well. Hundreds of new IRS agents need to be hired. Therefore, the raising of taxes has an expense associated with it as a portion of the new taxes has to go into paying for the new agency.
Then the people who have to pay the extra taxes have to change their plans. Not having the money to invest the way they want, they have to cancel certain expenditures. A person planning to buy a BMW puts those plans off until the economic situation is better. Other people do the same. Soon there is extra inventory at BMW. Sales people are let go as cars are not selling.
The sales people who are let go from BMW file for unemployment. Now, instead of the government receiving taxes from all those BMW sales people, the government has to pay them unemployment checks. So the extra revenue from raising taxes now has another bill associated with it. There are less people paying taxes because less people are working and not only are there less tax payers, but the government goes from receiving money from those people to PAYING money to those people.
The trucking companies that deliver BMW cars, the mechanics that repair them, the suppliers who supply the steel, computer components, electrical equipment, and leather for the seats all let people go because demand is so low. Now the unemployment rate is really starting to rise and in an act of compassion, the unemployment insurance period is increased by six months which causes government to pay out even more money.
Now the BGV illness has completely infected the body politic. People have less money because the government is confiscating more and more. In addition, the government is telling them how and where they can invest the money they are allowed to keep. This loss of freedom and individual wealth is not offset by any gains in government revenue because whatever new money the government hoped to obtain is paid out in new expenses that didn’t exist before the tax increase.
This is only the beginning of the damage caused by the BGV virus. Not only is there a bunch of new expenses, but there isn’t any new economic growth. A person who was planning to create an extra room in his home puts those plans off because after paying the extra taxes, he doesn’t have enough money left. The construction firm that would have gotten the job and would have paid taxes on it now pays no taxes and goes out of business because no one else is adding rooms to their homes either.
The insidious virus is now in full replication mode. Politicians see the infection spreading but instead of trying to treat it, they perpetuate it with more of the same. With unemployment levels skyrocketing and debt growing, the politicians decide to create new government jobs. The people who do these jobs go off of unemployment but their very salary is still paid by other tax payers! These jobs cost money and produce little. In addition, the people who do these jobs become dependent on the very system that gave them the jobs in the first place. A vicious cycle begins as the people who work for the government become permanent perpetuators of the BGV disease!
With all the new government jobs, there is no innovation by individuals. People who may have come up with inventions and ideas that could improve the lives of others don’t have the money to invest. There is no entrepreneurialism because not only do people lack the money to invest but they also know that even if they manage to scrape up the money, come up with a great idea, work hard and have success, they still won’t get to keep the fruits of their hard work! Soon people become dependent on other countries for products because the cost of producing them here and taking risks versus the potential rewards becomes prohibitive.
At this point the BGV germs are circulating all through the body politic. The infection is severe. Debt and unemployment are high. Individual freedom is in danger. There is no growth in the economy. Opportunities are few and innovation is null. So what do the politicians do? They ask to raise taxes again! This is similar to an endless loop in the worst computer virus. A loop is a piece of computer code that repeats itself over and over until some condition is finally met to stop it. But with another rise in taxes, there is no exit to the loop as it repeats again and again while doing more damage each time it runs through. The patient, already infected with a severe case of BGV, will not survive if the loop continues to run.
Awareness of diseases is important. People have cancer walks and AIDS walks in order to prevent the spread of diseases and to raise consciousness. They remind people to see doctors and get checked for breast cancer, colon cancer and prostate cancer. The time has come for a BGV walk to create awareness and to put a definitive end to this horrific epidemic. It is now time to educate the public to the scourge known as the BGV (Big Government) virus. This self perpetuating disease has always been around in one form or another. It can be reasonably argued that this disease has caused more death and destruction than any other. The infection rate has, hitherto, been kept in check in the United States. Now the country is in danger of a BGV epidemic. It must be stopped.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Neocons, Teabaggers and Chickenhawks - The Methods of Saul Alinsky and the Demonization of Political Opponents
Saul Alinsky’s book “Rules For Radicals” was published in 1971. Its methods have become synonymous with leftist political strategy. Even people who never read the book have been so ingrained by the techniques outlined within its pages that they use its methods without realizing it. Both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are admirers of Saul Alinsky.
A 21 year old Hillary Rodham was offered a job with the Alinsky Community Organizing group and later wrote her thesis on Alinsky. Obama’s early community organizing started when he was 24 years old in the Alinsky groups “Developing Communities Project (DCP)” and the “Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC)”.
In the first chapter of “Rules For Radicals” called “The Purpose”, Alinsky writes:
What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. ‘The Prince’ was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. ‘Rules for Radicals’ is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
Who is supposed to have power in the United States? According to the Constitution, the people hold power and are governed by their consent. The government must answer to the people, not the people to the government. So who, exactly, does Alinsky want to take power from and who is supposed to get this power? This idea of “holding power” is always couched in terms such as the “Have-Nots” or the “Poor” but in reality it seeks to fundamentally change the government of the United States.
In speaking about the Constitution, Barack Obama said “It says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.” It would be easy to say that Obama lacks an understanding of the constitution but he probably understands it all too well. Trained in Alinsky tactics, Obama wants to change the power structure and will use the structure (the constitution and free markets) only insofar as it can be used to achieve his ends.
Alinsky said “All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.” So it is not just about creating new ideas, it is about discrediting the ones already in place, as Obama does when he criticizes the constitution. When people refer to the constitution as a “Living Document” they make the constitution “pliable”. A “pliable” constitution is easier to bend to the desires of those who wish to remodel it in such a way that the original intent is unrecognizable.
Ironically, according to Alinsky, it is the very idea of being a “radical” or a dangerous “enemy” to the status quo that gives the community organizer his credibility. Alinsky said that the “establishment” must fear the organizer and label him as “DANGEROUS”:
“for in that one word the establishment reveals its fear of the organizer, its fear that he represents a threat to its omnipotence. Now the organizer has his ‘birth certificate’ and can begin.”
And you silly people thought Obama didn’t have a birth certificate!
Alinsky understood that in order to gather a following, the organizer needed to inspire confidence to a core group. While Obama fights charges that he is not a radical and tries to minimize his associations with people such as Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, he revels in it at the same time, giving a nod and a wink to those who openly or secretly adhere to the same agenda. He also has the added benefit of ridiculing those who point out these things as being out of touch or conspiracy mongers.
In the chapter “Of Means and Ends”, Alinsky utters his “Rules of Ethics”. In the eleventh rule of ethics he states “goals must be phrased in general terms like “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, “Of the Common Welfare”. It’s easy to see his influence in current mindless clichés such as ‘the rich get richer while the poor get poorer’. Mostly in this chapter, Alinsky justifies any means if it leads to the desired end. He points out that morality is flexible, depending upon the time of occurrence, who commits a particular act, and how the act is sold or marketed. It is a war mentality, as he states in his third rule of ethics, “in war the end justifies any means”. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear Rahm Emanuel’s voice saying “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”
Alinsky’s “power tactics” can be seen in almost everything the left does. For example, the fourth tactic is “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules”. Conservatives always moan about double standards. The reason that there are double standards is because conservatives have standards. It is impossible to always live up to high standards but the admirable part about having high standards is to try. Failing is not a crime but in the view of the left and of Alinsky, it is an opportunity. Therefore, if Bill Clinton has affairs or is accused of sexual harassment, it is a personal matter since he never had any standards to begin with, but a conservative such as Clarence Thomas is expected to walk on water or be viewed as a hypocrite.
The fifth rule states “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” Alinsky goes on to say “It is almost impossible to counter attack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition who then react to your advantage.” When the Tea Party rose to prominence in response to Obama’s radical agenda, the left came up with terms such as “tea bagger”. They thought themselves very clever in their use of that vulgar term. They have also shown fondness for the term “Neo-con”, giggling like 10 year old children when using that witty phrase. They use terms such as “Chicken Hawks” if a person who never served in the military should dare say that maybe military use is needed in a certain situation.
The thirteenth rule is “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” The left constantly looks for the latest “boogeyman/boogeywoman”. The viciousness of the attacks on Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and many others all fall into this category. In this tactic, the left doesn’t seek to find truth -- They seek to create a living caricature of evil, incompetence and cruelty and they don’t care how cruel they are in slandering people who have families and loved ones as long as it serves the purpose of mitigating an effective voice of the right.
The dirty little secret about Alinsky and his approach to “change” is that he has contempt for the average person. In the thirteenth rule above, for example, Alinsky explains that a person or “target” is needed because it is difficult to get people organized and excited about a concept or policy. It’s almost as if he views people as children, who need a cartoon character to understand his point.
In fact, Alinsky says about average people:
“Their lives have been 90 per cent unfulfilled dreams. To escape their frustration they grasp at a last hope that their children will get that college education and realize those unfulfilled dreams. They are a fearful people who feel threatened from all sides.”
Alinsky shows his contempt for his own followers. When reading his book, you get a sense that he is out to manipulate people, not to inspire them.
Yet Alinsky does understand the need to inspire. His form of inspiration, however, does not appeal to the best in people, it appeals to their worst – their fears, their envy and their jealousies. It is inspiration by trickery. In order to inspire by trickery, a good salesperson is needed. Along comes Barack Obama and he is perfect for the job. In the chapter titled “Communication”, Alinsky states:
“the organizer will have a pretty good idea about what the community should be doing, and he will want to suggest, maneuver, and persuade the community toward that action. He will never seem to tell the community what to do. Instead he will use loaded questions. If possible, he will get someone in the audience to faint in order to accentuate his point.”
OK, I made the last one up but certainly Obama is Alinsky’s ideal communicator.
The founders of the United States didn’t base the constitution on trickery or manipulation. They created an idea that has survived and prospered based on the concept that people do not owe their existence to others and that they are responsible for their own happiness and well being. Rules For Radicals by Saul Alinsky is a recipe for agitation, not for prosperity and certainly not for morality. Anyone in a position of power who follows the teaching of Alinsky is someone who should not be in a position of power.
A 21 year old Hillary Rodham was offered a job with the Alinsky Community Organizing group and later wrote her thesis on Alinsky. Obama’s early community organizing started when he was 24 years old in the Alinsky groups “Developing Communities Project (DCP)” and the “Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC)”.
In the first chapter of “Rules For Radicals” called “The Purpose”, Alinsky writes:
What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. ‘The Prince’ was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. ‘Rules for Radicals’ is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
Who is supposed to have power in the United States? According to the Constitution, the people hold power and are governed by their consent. The government must answer to the people, not the people to the government. So who, exactly, does Alinsky want to take power from and who is supposed to get this power? This idea of “holding power” is always couched in terms such as the “Have-Nots” or the “Poor” but in reality it seeks to fundamentally change the government of the United States.
In speaking about the Constitution, Barack Obama said “It says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.” It would be easy to say that Obama lacks an understanding of the constitution but he probably understands it all too well. Trained in Alinsky tactics, Obama wants to change the power structure and will use the structure (the constitution and free markets) only insofar as it can be used to achieve his ends.
Alinsky said “All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.” So it is not just about creating new ideas, it is about discrediting the ones already in place, as Obama does when he criticizes the constitution. When people refer to the constitution as a “Living Document” they make the constitution “pliable”. A “pliable” constitution is easier to bend to the desires of those who wish to remodel it in such a way that the original intent is unrecognizable.
Ironically, according to Alinsky, it is the very idea of being a “radical” or a dangerous “enemy” to the status quo that gives the community organizer his credibility. Alinsky said that the “establishment” must fear the organizer and label him as “DANGEROUS”:
“for in that one word the establishment reveals its fear of the organizer, its fear that he represents a threat to its omnipotence. Now the organizer has his ‘birth certificate’ and can begin.”
And you silly people thought Obama didn’t have a birth certificate!
Alinsky understood that in order to gather a following, the organizer needed to inspire confidence to a core group. While Obama fights charges that he is not a radical and tries to minimize his associations with people such as Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, he revels in it at the same time, giving a nod and a wink to those who openly or secretly adhere to the same agenda. He also has the added benefit of ridiculing those who point out these things as being out of touch or conspiracy mongers.
In the chapter “Of Means and Ends”, Alinsky utters his “Rules of Ethics”. In the eleventh rule of ethics he states “goals must be phrased in general terms like “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, “Of the Common Welfare”. It’s easy to see his influence in current mindless clichés such as ‘the rich get richer while the poor get poorer’. Mostly in this chapter, Alinsky justifies any means if it leads to the desired end. He points out that morality is flexible, depending upon the time of occurrence, who commits a particular act, and how the act is sold or marketed. It is a war mentality, as he states in his third rule of ethics, “in war the end justifies any means”. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear Rahm Emanuel’s voice saying “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”
Alinsky’s “power tactics” can be seen in almost everything the left does. For example, the fourth tactic is “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules”. Conservatives always moan about double standards. The reason that there are double standards is because conservatives have standards. It is impossible to always live up to high standards but the admirable part about having high standards is to try. Failing is not a crime but in the view of the left and of Alinsky, it is an opportunity. Therefore, if Bill Clinton has affairs or is accused of sexual harassment, it is a personal matter since he never had any standards to begin with, but a conservative such as Clarence Thomas is expected to walk on water or be viewed as a hypocrite.
The fifth rule states “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” Alinsky goes on to say “It is almost impossible to counter attack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition who then react to your advantage.” When the Tea Party rose to prominence in response to Obama’s radical agenda, the left came up with terms such as “tea bagger”. They thought themselves very clever in their use of that vulgar term. They have also shown fondness for the term “Neo-con”, giggling like 10 year old children when using that witty phrase. They use terms such as “Chicken Hawks” if a person who never served in the military should dare say that maybe military use is needed in a certain situation.
The thirteenth rule is “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” The left constantly looks for the latest “boogeyman/boogeywoman”. The viciousness of the attacks on Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and many others all fall into this category. In this tactic, the left doesn’t seek to find truth -- They seek to create a living caricature of evil, incompetence and cruelty and they don’t care how cruel they are in slandering people who have families and loved ones as long as it serves the purpose of mitigating an effective voice of the right.
The dirty little secret about Alinsky and his approach to “change” is that he has contempt for the average person. In the thirteenth rule above, for example, Alinsky explains that a person or “target” is needed because it is difficult to get people organized and excited about a concept or policy. It’s almost as if he views people as children, who need a cartoon character to understand his point.
In fact, Alinsky says about average people:
“Their lives have been 90 per cent unfulfilled dreams. To escape their frustration they grasp at a last hope that their children will get that college education and realize those unfulfilled dreams. They are a fearful people who feel threatened from all sides.”
Alinsky shows his contempt for his own followers. When reading his book, you get a sense that he is out to manipulate people, not to inspire them.
Yet Alinsky does understand the need to inspire. His form of inspiration, however, does not appeal to the best in people, it appeals to their worst – their fears, their envy and their jealousies. It is inspiration by trickery. In order to inspire by trickery, a good salesperson is needed. Along comes Barack Obama and he is perfect for the job. In the chapter titled “Communication”, Alinsky states:
“the organizer will have a pretty good idea about what the community should be doing, and he will want to suggest, maneuver, and persuade the community toward that action. He will never seem to tell the community what to do. Instead he will use loaded questions. If possible, he will get someone in the audience to faint in order to accentuate his point.”
OK, I made the last one up but certainly Obama is Alinsky’s ideal communicator.
The founders of the United States didn’t base the constitution on trickery or manipulation. They created an idea that has survived and prospered based on the concept that people do not owe their existence to others and that they are responsible for their own happiness and well being. Rules For Radicals by Saul Alinsky is a recipe for agitation, not for prosperity and certainly not for morality. Anyone in a position of power who follows the teaching of Alinsky is someone who should not be in a position of power.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Choices, Transformations And Observations
I’m tired of being told that my way of looking at the world is less moral than the ways of other people. I’m tired of being told to disregard what my eyes are seeing because other people may find it offensive.
I am the child of people who survived the Holocaust. My mother was first taken from her home in a small village called Nisni Slatina and taken along with other Jewish people to a decaying, disease ridden ghetto. From there she was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. As she arrived in Auschwitz, she asked a woman Gestapo where her parents were. The woman Gestapo pointed to the smoke bellowing from the chimneys and said, “You want to know where your parents are? That is your parents.” My mother was wearing earrings and the Gestapo pulled down on them, splitting her ears and creating the scars that she still bears today, at 92 years old.
My mother was taken out of Auschwitz as one of 300 girls to do slave labor in a factory called Telefunken. She was treated better at Telefunken doing slave labor than she was at Auschwitz. She was lucky to be sent there. As the tide of the war started to turn, my mother was sent to Bergen Belsen, where she was lying among the dead and dying when the camp was liberated by the British. My mother survived, as did three of her sisters. Two other sisters and her brother, along with both of her parents, were killed.
My mother told me of her experiences often. She told me about how when she entered Auschwitz, she saw the women there behaving like animals, fighting for every scrap of dirty food and swore she would never act that way. But hunger was the over-riding emotion and one day when she spotted a dirty potato skin on the floor, she grabbed at it. She said this to me many times with a lot of emotion in her voice; “Howard, that dirty potato skin tasted like an apple to me.”
As a child, I never fully understood the significance of the Holocaust. I knew it was bad. My mother would have nightmares where she would scream in such a horrified way and you couldn’t wake her up! I would run into their room and literally shake the bed. My father was always afraid that waking her up from these dreams would be too sudden and traumatic. She would finally wake up and start to relax, though with tears in her eyes. I would ask her what happened in the dream. All she would ever say was that big dogs were chasing her. She never went into more details about those nightmares and would just say that she didn’t remember the rest.
As I started to get a little older I started asking questions. What about all the other people? Didn’t anyone see that what was going on was wrong? My mother told me one story about how the neighbors in Nisni Slatina, people who had been over for dinner, people who they had been friends with, took advantage of the growing anti-semitism and started to steal things from their home. This outraged me. The evil of the Nazis was self-evident, though hardly explainable. But that average people would not only do nothing to help, but actually use the situation for petty thievery – that just stuck in my craw.
Some thoughts that you have as a child stay with you forever. Perhaps it is because these are your formative years and you are thinking things out for the first time. As you get older, thoughts come into your mind and leave and you never even knew they were there! The thought that stayed with me and shaped me forever is this; I would never be a person who would allow other people to intimidate me into going against what I knew instinctively to be true or morally correct. I didn’t always live up to this idea but it is the idea that shaped who I am.
As I grew up, it seemed obvious that a liberal ideology was morally correct. Liberals were supposed to stand up for what was right. But as I grew older I started to see things in a different way than many of my friends. I think it started with the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. President Carter was so inept and then Ronald Reagan came in and talked about peace through strength. No one wants war but there is honor in defending what is right. Cowering and hoping that things will change is what led to the Holocaust. I long ago made a pledge to myself that I would see the world as it was and not how other people said it was, and now for the first time, I was forced to act on that pledge.
Even little things started to irk me in their inconsistencies and misrepresentations. In 1984, when Walter Mondale was pressured to pick a woman as his running mate, he chose Geraldine Ferraro. Everyone said how courageous he was for picking a woman and I thought that given the NY Times and every liberal organization was pressuring him to pick a woman, courage at that point would have been to pick a man! It’s not that he was wrong for picking a woman, just that it wasn’t courageous; given the pressure he was under to do so.
It’s funny because people on the left point to the new media and say that these outlets preach to people who don’t know any better, thereby belittling people like me as being easily deceived when the exact opposite is true. My observations of the world led me to becoming conservative before there was a conservative media and when I saw the new conservative media pop up, I was happy to know that there were more people out there who saw the world the way I saw it.
Now in 2010, I’ve seen what my parents saw -- the resurgence of anti-semitism. I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime but I always promised myself that if I did see it, I would do what I could to fight against it. This anti-semitism is coming from the Muslim community and from left-wing groups and it makes no sense to try and be politically correct and pretend it is something else.
In the UK, many schools have dropped the Holocaust from history lessons because of fears that it might offend Muslims. Why would Muslims be offended by the teaching of the Holocaust? The fact that the UK education system has given in to this re-writing of history is shameful and eerily reminiscent of the giving in to nazism in the 1930s.
People keep saying that all Muslims are not terrorists, but was every German a nazi? Did people say “Don’t judge all Germans by the actions of a few”? The fact was that the few controlled the many and unfortunately, it’s the same today with the Muslim religion. I will believe that the Muslim religion is a religion of peace when people of the Muslim faith come out to protest the radicalism among them with the same fervor that they protest against a cartoon of Muhammad.
Recently, Juan Williams was fired from NPR for saying what everyone instinctively knows to be true – on airplanes, people will look at Muslims with suspicion and fear. While it’s true that most Muslims are not terrorists, most terrorists are Muslims and they, not other people, are responsible for that reaction. I would like to see the people who fired Juan Williams take a lie-detector test and be asked the question of whether or not they do a double take when a person with Muslim garb walks onto a plane. I would bet that they would fail the test if they said anything other than “Yes”.
In New York, people who call themselves liberal stand up for the rights to build a mosque near the World Trade Center. Does it matter that the people building the mosque don’t condemn the acts of terrorist organizations such as Hamas? Does it matter that it is being funded by anti-semitic organizations?
In Palestinian classes, Jewish people are portrayed to children as less than human. There are cartoons portraying Jewish people as money grubbers and monkeys. Why isn’t the world angered by these portrayals? Is it because the Jewish people haven’t threatened anyone? Are Jewish people worth less than others? These cartoons are no different than that of nazis. They would make Joseph Goebbels proud.
Ayn Rand once said “The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see”. It is exhausting trying to explain something that seems so self-evident yet it is an obligation, especially for me, to keep trying. I owe this to all the relatives of mine who died in the Holocaust.
I am the child of people who survived the Holocaust. My mother was first taken from her home in a small village called Nisni Slatina and taken along with other Jewish people to a decaying, disease ridden ghetto. From there she was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. As she arrived in Auschwitz, she asked a woman Gestapo where her parents were. The woman Gestapo pointed to the smoke bellowing from the chimneys and said, “You want to know where your parents are? That is your parents.” My mother was wearing earrings and the Gestapo pulled down on them, splitting her ears and creating the scars that she still bears today, at 92 years old.
My mother was taken out of Auschwitz as one of 300 girls to do slave labor in a factory called Telefunken. She was treated better at Telefunken doing slave labor than she was at Auschwitz. She was lucky to be sent there. As the tide of the war started to turn, my mother was sent to Bergen Belsen, where she was lying among the dead and dying when the camp was liberated by the British. My mother survived, as did three of her sisters. Two other sisters and her brother, along with both of her parents, were killed.
My mother told me of her experiences often. She told me about how when she entered Auschwitz, she saw the women there behaving like animals, fighting for every scrap of dirty food and swore she would never act that way. But hunger was the over-riding emotion and one day when she spotted a dirty potato skin on the floor, she grabbed at it. She said this to me many times with a lot of emotion in her voice; “Howard, that dirty potato skin tasted like an apple to me.”
As a child, I never fully understood the significance of the Holocaust. I knew it was bad. My mother would have nightmares where she would scream in such a horrified way and you couldn’t wake her up! I would run into their room and literally shake the bed. My father was always afraid that waking her up from these dreams would be too sudden and traumatic. She would finally wake up and start to relax, though with tears in her eyes. I would ask her what happened in the dream. All she would ever say was that big dogs were chasing her. She never went into more details about those nightmares and would just say that she didn’t remember the rest.
As I started to get a little older I started asking questions. What about all the other people? Didn’t anyone see that what was going on was wrong? My mother told me one story about how the neighbors in Nisni Slatina, people who had been over for dinner, people who they had been friends with, took advantage of the growing anti-semitism and started to steal things from their home. This outraged me. The evil of the Nazis was self-evident, though hardly explainable. But that average people would not only do nothing to help, but actually use the situation for petty thievery – that just stuck in my craw.
Some thoughts that you have as a child stay with you forever. Perhaps it is because these are your formative years and you are thinking things out for the first time. As you get older, thoughts come into your mind and leave and you never even knew they were there! The thought that stayed with me and shaped me forever is this; I would never be a person who would allow other people to intimidate me into going against what I knew instinctively to be true or morally correct. I didn’t always live up to this idea but it is the idea that shaped who I am.
As I grew up, it seemed obvious that a liberal ideology was morally correct. Liberals were supposed to stand up for what was right. But as I grew older I started to see things in a different way than many of my friends. I think it started with the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. President Carter was so inept and then Ronald Reagan came in and talked about peace through strength. No one wants war but there is honor in defending what is right. Cowering and hoping that things will change is what led to the Holocaust. I long ago made a pledge to myself that I would see the world as it was and not how other people said it was, and now for the first time, I was forced to act on that pledge.
Even little things started to irk me in their inconsistencies and misrepresentations. In 1984, when Walter Mondale was pressured to pick a woman as his running mate, he chose Geraldine Ferraro. Everyone said how courageous he was for picking a woman and I thought that given the NY Times and every liberal organization was pressuring him to pick a woman, courage at that point would have been to pick a man! It’s not that he was wrong for picking a woman, just that it wasn’t courageous; given the pressure he was under to do so.
It’s funny because people on the left point to the new media and say that these outlets preach to people who don’t know any better, thereby belittling people like me as being easily deceived when the exact opposite is true. My observations of the world led me to becoming conservative before there was a conservative media and when I saw the new conservative media pop up, I was happy to know that there were more people out there who saw the world the way I saw it.
Now in 2010, I’ve seen what my parents saw -- the resurgence of anti-semitism. I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime but I always promised myself that if I did see it, I would do what I could to fight against it. This anti-semitism is coming from the Muslim community and from left-wing groups and it makes no sense to try and be politically correct and pretend it is something else.
In the UK, many schools have dropped the Holocaust from history lessons because of fears that it might offend Muslims. Why would Muslims be offended by the teaching of the Holocaust? The fact that the UK education system has given in to this re-writing of history is shameful and eerily reminiscent of the giving in to nazism in the 1930s.
People keep saying that all Muslims are not terrorists, but was every German a nazi? Did people say “Don’t judge all Germans by the actions of a few”? The fact was that the few controlled the many and unfortunately, it’s the same today with the Muslim religion. I will believe that the Muslim religion is a religion of peace when people of the Muslim faith come out to protest the radicalism among them with the same fervor that they protest against a cartoon of Muhammad.
Recently, Juan Williams was fired from NPR for saying what everyone instinctively knows to be true – on airplanes, people will look at Muslims with suspicion and fear. While it’s true that most Muslims are not terrorists, most terrorists are Muslims and they, not other people, are responsible for that reaction. I would like to see the people who fired Juan Williams take a lie-detector test and be asked the question of whether or not they do a double take when a person with Muslim garb walks onto a plane. I would bet that they would fail the test if they said anything other than “Yes”.
In New York, people who call themselves liberal stand up for the rights to build a mosque near the World Trade Center. Does it matter that the people building the mosque don’t condemn the acts of terrorist organizations such as Hamas? Does it matter that it is being funded by anti-semitic organizations?
In Palestinian classes, Jewish people are portrayed to children as less than human. There are cartoons portraying Jewish people as money grubbers and monkeys. Why isn’t the world angered by these portrayals? Is it because the Jewish people haven’t threatened anyone? Are Jewish people worth less than others? These cartoons are no different than that of nazis. They would make Joseph Goebbels proud.
Ayn Rand once said “The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see”. It is exhausting trying to explain something that seems so self-evident yet it is an obligation, especially for me, to keep trying. I owe this to all the relatives of mine who died in the Holocaust.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
The Truth And Nothing But The Truth
I recently saw a movie called “The Invention of Lying” with Ricky Gervais. The movie took place in a mythical society where there was no concept of lying. I wondered what a speech by Barack Obama would look like if he had lived in this mythical society and had to tell the truth as he saw it. The speech might go something like this…
Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: Two years ago I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. Now let me be clear, I would have never been elected if everything was running smoothly in the country. I was elected because I promised that I would change and improve these things. I offered hope.
It’s been two years and while we are still at war, while our unemployment has skyrocketed up to almost 10%, and while our debt has grown to unsustainable levels, I am amazed that I can still get away with blaming the previous administration.
America elected me because we decided to move forward as one nation and one people. But some of you have decided you do not want to be one nation. Selfish people who watch FOX news and listen to talk radio -- unpatriotic people who have formed tea parties are trying to misrepresent and ruin the change I have proposed. If we are truly to become one nation and one people, then those of you who have ideas that are different than mine need to shut up and stop standing in the way.
People need to understand that I, as President of the United States, know better than you about what is good for the country. We need to get away from our colonial, imperialistic and nationalistic way of thinking about our country and about the world. We need to understand that we are world citizens, not just citizens of one country. We cannot afford the arrogance that has marred this country in the past. We are just one country out of many and we need to have relationships with other countries based on mutual trust and mutual respect.
As to the economy, we cannot afford another so-called economic "expansion" like the one from last decade – what some call the "lost decade”. I don’t personally know anyone who actually called it the “lost decade” but after this speech, there will be people who will start to use the term “the lost decade” and it will seem as if that phrase has been around for a while. It’s a little trick that I and my speech writers use to fool people. We create a new term and make it seem as if others have been saying it all along.
The economic expansion of the last decade was built on a housing bubble that was unsustainable. I have said in the past that the bursting of the housing bubble was caused by Wall Street greed and unregulated financial speculation. What I haven’t said, but what is no less true, is that by forcing banks to give loans to people who had bad credit and little assets, was that we were creating a situation whereby if the housing bubble burst, a lot of innocent people would be left holding the bag. As an advisor to ACORN, I personally played a big role in seeing that this policy of bad loans continued. This, of course, was done with the best of intentions.
In fact, many of my close associates have also played a part in the forcing of banks to give bad loans with the goal that home ownership is a right, rather than a privilege. These include Barney Frank, Andrew Cuomo, Chris Dodd, Franklin Raines and many others. The reasons for the financial collapse are very complicated and I rely on most of you to not take the initiative to look into what actually caused the crisis.
I know that most of you are tired if the partisanship, the shouting, and the pettiness in Washington. So in order to have a more civil and bi-partisan tone, people need to believe in me. I ask for your trust. My opponents on the other side of the aisle try to bring up facts to confuse people. We will have a much more civil and democratic society if my opponents would stop trying to throw their opinions into the political debate. This only serves to create a partisan tone in Washington. It would be much more beneficial to the country if you would simply accept that the financial crisis was caused by Wall Street greed and leave it at that.
We all hated to have to bail out the banks. It was about as popular as a root canal but it needed to be done. So I supported the last administration's efforts to create the financial rescue program. I know that I bring up the previous administration quite a lot. There are two reasons for this. Number one: When I do something unpopular or reckless, it is beneficial to me if the previous administration has also done something unpopular or reckless. Number two: If the unpopular and reckless thing I have done doesn’t work out, I get to blame the previous administration but if it does work out, I get to take credit for it.
We need to make sure consumers and middle-class families have the information they need to make financial decisions. We can't allow financial institutions, including those that take your deposits, to take risks that threaten the whole economy. From this point forward, I will see to it that only government will be allowed to take risks that threaten the whole economy.
In fact, many companies have now paid back their loans so it has been a complete success in staving off financial disaster. Therefore, tonight I'm proposing that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat. Because I’ll be dammed if I’m just going to take that money and give it back to its rightful owners – you the people.
As to international issues, as most of you probably know, I was against the Iraq war right from the beginning. What many of you may not realize is that I was just as firmly against the surge strategy in Iraq that brought us the ultimate victory there. Nevertheless, I have ended the conflict in Iraq and see no reason to give credit to anyone other than myself (well maybe the soldiers deserve a little credit as well). The war, after all, did end on my watch.
Illegal immigration is looked at by some as a problem. And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system – to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation. We need to get more immigrants to come to the US, to offer their hard labor, to pay taxes, to fill jobs that Americans won’t do, and to register as democrats.
As to my healthcare plan, if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. I will listen to your ideas before I dismiss them completely. I will then point out that elections have consequences and that I am the president. If you continue to make noise challenging that my healthcare plan will do all that I say it will do, I will make sure that you are portrayed as an out of touch troglodyte who doesn’t care about average working people.
Now I will be the first to admit that my administration has had some political setbacks and some of them were deserved. My administration should have done a better job of communicating how bad things were. In short, we didn’t take enough advantage of the economic and international crises both at home and abroad.
I did not come here to do what was easy and I did not say that change would happen overnight. We can do what's necessary to keep our poll numbers high or we can do what's best for the next generation. Or we can create a crisis that we can use to our political advantage. We can spend so much money that we dig a hole so deep it is impossible to get out of and when we’re done spending us into insolvency we can blame it all on George Bush.
Thank you. God Bless You. And God Bless the United States of America.
Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: Two years ago I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. Now let me be clear, I would have never been elected if everything was running smoothly in the country. I was elected because I promised that I would change and improve these things. I offered hope.
It’s been two years and while we are still at war, while our unemployment has skyrocketed up to almost 10%, and while our debt has grown to unsustainable levels, I am amazed that I can still get away with blaming the previous administration.
America elected me because we decided to move forward as one nation and one people. But some of you have decided you do not want to be one nation. Selfish people who watch FOX news and listen to talk radio -- unpatriotic people who have formed tea parties are trying to misrepresent and ruin the change I have proposed. If we are truly to become one nation and one people, then those of you who have ideas that are different than mine need to shut up and stop standing in the way.
People need to understand that I, as President of the United States, know better than you about what is good for the country. We need to get away from our colonial, imperialistic and nationalistic way of thinking about our country and about the world. We need to understand that we are world citizens, not just citizens of one country. We cannot afford the arrogance that has marred this country in the past. We are just one country out of many and we need to have relationships with other countries based on mutual trust and mutual respect.
As to the economy, we cannot afford another so-called economic "expansion" like the one from last decade – what some call the "lost decade”. I don’t personally know anyone who actually called it the “lost decade” but after this speech, there will be people who will start to use the term “the lost decade” and it will seem as if that phrase has been around for a while. It’s a little trick that I and my speech writers use to fool people. We create a new term and make it seem as if others have been saying it all along.
The economic expansion of the last decade was built on a housing bubble that was unsustainable. I have said in the past that the bursting of the housing bubble was caused by Wall Street greed and unregulated financial speculation. What I haven’t said, but what is no less true, is that by forcing banks to give loans to people who had bad credit and little assets, was that we were creating a situation whereby if the housing bubble burst, a lot of innocent people would be left holding the bag. As an advisor to ACORN, I personally played a big role in seeing that this policy of bad loans continued. This, of course, was done with the best of intentions.
In fact, many of my close associates have also played a part in the forcing of banks to give bad loans with the goal that home ownership is a right, rather than a privilege. These include Barney Frank, Andrew Cuomo, Chris Dodd, Franklin Raines and many others. The reasons for the financial collapse are very complicated and I rely on most of you to not take the initiative to look into what actually caused the crisis.
I know that most of you are tired if the partisanship, the shouting, and the pettiness in Washington. So in order to have a more civil and bi-partisan tone, people need to believe in me. I ask for your trust. My opponents on the other side of the aisle try to bring up facts to confuse people. We will have a much more civil and democratic society if my opponents would stop trying to throw their opinions into the political debate. This only serves to create a partisan tone in Washington. It would be much more beneficial to the country if you would simply accept that the financial crisis was caused by Wall Street greed and leave it at that.
We all hated to have to bail out the banks. It was about as popular as a root canal but it needed to be done. So I supported the last administration's efforts to create the financial rescue program. I know that I bring up the previous administration quite a lot. There are two reasons for this. Number one: When I do something unpopular or reckless, it is beneficial to me if the previous administration has also done something unpopular or reckless. Number two: If the unpopular and reckless thing I have done doesn’t work out, I get to blame the previous administration but if it does work out, I get to take credit for it.
We need to make sure consumers and middle-class families have the information they need to make financial decisions. We can't allow financial institutions, including those that take your deposits, to take risks that threaten the whole economy. From this point forward, I will see to it that only government will be allowed to take risks that threaten the whole economy.
In fact, many companies have now paid back their loans so it has been a complete success in staving off financial disaster. Therefore, tonight I'm proposing that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat. Because I’ll be dammed if I’m just going to take that money and give it back to its rightful owners – you the people.
As to international issues, as most of you probably know, I was against the Iraq war right from the beginning. What many of you may not realize is that I was just as firmly against the surge strategy in Iraq that brought us the ultimate victory there. Nevertheless, I have ended the conflict in Iraq and see no reason to give credit to anyone other than myself (well maybe the soldiers deserve a little credit as well). The war, after all, did end on my watch.
Illegal immigration is looked at by some as a problem. And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system – to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation. We need to get more immigrants to come to the US, to offer their hard labor, to pay taxes, to fill jobs that Americans won’t do, and to register as democrats.
As to my healthcare plan, if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. I will listen to your ideas before I dismiss them completely. I will then point out that elections have consequences and that I am the president. If you continue to make noise challenging that my healthcare plan will do all that I say it will do, I will make sure that you are portrayed as an out of touch troglodyte who doesn’t care about average working people.
Now I will be the first to admit that my administration has had some political setbacks and some of them were deserved. My administration should have done a better job of communicating how bad things were. In short, we didn’t take enough advantage of the economic and international crises both at home and abroad.
I did not come here to do what was easy and I did not say that change would happen overnight. We can do what's necessary to keep our poll numbers high or we can do what's best for the next generation. Or we can create a crisis that we can use to our political advantage. We can spend so much money that we dig a hole so deep it is impossible to get out of and when we’re done spending us into insolvency we can blame it all on George Bush.
Thank you. God Bless You. And God Bless the United States of America.
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