The Tea Party Call to Duty

March 30, 2012
By Sally Zelikovsky

At the time of America's founding, the notion of civic duty was commonplace.  Our entire system was predicated on the idea that citizens would take an active role in the governance of their towns, states, and country.  Little was asked of Americans other than self-governance, jury duty, fighting wars when necessary, protecting the homeland, and living by the rule of law.  In time, Americans were additionally "asked" to forfeit a portion of the fruits of their labor to foot the bills the government would incur. 

Over the years, we have handed off most of our self-governing and civic duties to others.  As the Founders anticipated, we elect town council members and state and federal legislators to "represent" us.  But all too often, we leave the voting booth, brush our hands together, and go back to our normal lives thinking we are done...until the next election.  In the meantime, we relinquish considerable power and control over our lives to the very people who are supposed to be working for us.

We have so completely shirked our personal and civic responsibilities that we have inadvertently created a class of professional politicians.  With the economic and personal stakes being so high for these professional politicians, the legislation they enact is often compromised, and their re-election campaigns are motivated more by what's good for the incumbent than by what's good for the People.

Jury duty persists, but most citizens will do anything they can to get out of it.

We no longer have a draft.  The brave men and women who volunteer do it out of love of country so the rest of us don't have to, and for that, we compensate them.

Most of us try to live by the rule of law and comply with tax burdens, but both have become so onerous that they encroach on our freedoms while bloating the State with power.

Protecting the homeland has two different prongs -- the physical protection of our country, our borders, our property, and our people, and the more metaphysical protection of our ideology, our way of life, our principles, and our freedoms.

The metaphysical is as important as the physical protection of our homeland, yet it continues to be sorely neglected.  While most of us are dismayed by the erosion of our liberties, only a fraction of us are willing to fight for them and make the necessary sacrifices our men and women in uniform make every day.

Most of us realize we are in an existential struggle for the country's soul and understand that there are many aspects to this war.  Our endgame is to restore constitutional governance, and a key battle will be waged on November 6, 2012.  During the next eight months, we will encounter many clashes on many fronts and, like our soldiers, will be asked to participate in many operations -- covert and overt. 

From April 14 to 16, Tea Parties across the country will be having their fourth annual tax day Tea Party events.  Conservatives of all stripes are required to report for duty. 

Yet many conservatives do not see the sense in standing around with a bunch of like-minded people holding signs.  They do not think it accomplishes anything.  They think it is silly, beneath them, and kind of embarrassing.  They could not be more misguided.  The strategic benefit to participating in a rally is tremendous.

We do much in the Tea Party that is targeted and action-oriented -- we petition; get out the vote; support constitutional conservatives; call, e-mail, and fax our representatives; run for office, sponsor initiatives and legislation, attend town council meetings, etc.

But we cannot underestimate the value of psychological operations (PsyOps) or forget to employ them.

Taking to the streets is essential in any battle for the country.  It shows the enemy that we are alive and organized.  It shows them that we are nimble and can mobilize large numbers in a short time.  It gets our message out.  It brings us together to network and be heard with one loud bang.  And protests and rallies do not drain precious resources or cost much.

While Nancy Pelosi is yammering that Tea Partiers are "anti-government," what sends a more powerful message to progressives, Democrats, liberals, and Occupiers?  A gathering of a hundred conservatives with signs in a park or a gathering of ten thousand?

What size crowd is harder for the press to ignore?  A crowd of 250 or one of 25,000?

So get off your couch, tell your kids you cannot make their game this one time, arrange for that weekend getaway to take place on another weekend, do your taxes ahead of time...and be part of your local Tea Party rally.  If you cannot find one, get on a train or bus or plane and come to San Francisco, where you can Tea-Party in the Belly of the Beast.

But do not think for a minute that someone else is doing it.  They are not.  We have eight months left to find the lost soul of America's constitutional governance.  We need every able-bodied conservative warrior to show up and make the sacrifice.  This is a tiny request in comparison to the demands made on those who put their lives, their time, their families, and their dreams on hold to fight for freedom.

We might not fight with gun and sword, but we do fight with pen and word.  And you cannot be heard if you are not shouting.

For those who brush aside the Tea Party this year, any loss in November will be on your shoulders.  It will not be because the Republicans couldn't come up with a decent candidate.  It will not be because people didn't try.  It will be because too few tried.

The political road is littered with propositions, initiatives, and candidates that failed to garner enough votes, and with petitions that failed to amass enough signatures.  We cannot allow this election to be a casualty of inaction.

Ronald Reagan -- whom conservatives love to quote -- spoke often about the risks attached to apathy and lack of participation.  

Let us be sure that those who come after will say...we did everything that could be done."
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done."

Freedom ... must be fought for, protected, and handed on for [our children] to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children, what it was once like where men were free.  

There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind ... and ... if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record ... that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.

Americans have faced many forks in the road, and it comes as no surprise that this is another "time to choose."  Do I stay home or get involved?  Do I set aside time in the next six months to help a candidate or watch the returns on TV?  Do I go to my country home every weekend or postpone it so that I can GOTV?  

Do I go for my jog when the Tea Party is happening or do it earlier in the day?  Do I make some phone calls to support a Senate candidate or chat with friends over coffee?

It doesn't matter if you wear a tool belt or a suit to work.  It doesn't matter if you earn $20,000, $200,000 or $2 million a year.  It doesn't matter if you went to trade school or law school.

This is not the time to worry about what your neighbor might think.  This is a time for each of us to do his or her part to save the country.  It is a time for valor --  maybe not on the battlefield, but certainly on the political battlefront.  

You can simply quote Reagan and feel good about yourself for a few minutes, or you can get involved and preserve this shining city on a hill for generations to come.   

Otherwise, as Lincoln said, "To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men."

American Thinker

Watch Wisconsin

March 29, 2012
By Bruce Walker

Republican Governor Scott Walker, Lieutenant Governor Kleefisch and two Republican state senators will face a recall vote in Wisconsin and the date of that election, with the likely date of the recall vote being June 
5.  A fifth Republican, Senator Pam Galloway, who was also going to face a recall election, has resigned from the state senate.  This leaves the Senate tied 16-16, so  the recall vote in June will determine which party controls the Wisconsin Senate. 

So is the left winning there?  Wisconsin is a left-leaning state, the sort whose general support Democrats need if they are going to rule America.  If Democrats fail in these recall elections, then the left will have suffered a strategic loss which may unravel its long dominance of American politics.

The putative reasons for this recall election are three changes enacted by Wisconsin Republicans when they took over state government last January: (1) public employee union bosses cannot bargain for benefits in contracts any more, (2) union dues for public workers are no longer automatically deducted from paychecks, and (3) Wisconsin now has a statutory photo ID requirement for voting.

The first reform has worked, and the second reform has also worked.  Public employees now get to keep more of their paycheck -- in some cases, this means an extra $1,000 a year -- and union bureaucracies have been trimmed, as this Washington Examiner article nicely explains.  Implementation of the photo ID law has been enjoined by Judge Flanagan, who before issuing his ruling neglected to tell the parties that he had already signed a petition to recall Governor Walker, which made him, by the limpest ethical standards, unqualified to hear the case.

Flanagan is only part of the seamy abuse of judges to fight Wisconsin reforms.  I noted last April that the left's blatant (and failed) attempt to defeat Judge Prosser in his re-election last spring was based solely on using the state bench to thwart laws passed by the people's representatives.  The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law. 

Now it appears that twenty-nine sitting Wisconsin state judges, 12% of the judges in the state, have also signed petitions to recall Walker and other Republicans.  The New York Post reports the pathetic excuse given by Judge Warpinski when confronted with signing the recall petition: "I wasn't advocating for any political party. I was advocating for the recall process, which I thought was completely separate and apart."  

The judge, of course, is lying. 

We also recently learned that twenty-five journalists covering state news also signed recall petitions.  Gannett Media Group has also announced that twenty-five of these "journalists" violated the ethical standards and will be disciplined.

The efforts to stop Walker's reforms include: (1) Democrat state senators fleeing to Chicago, that Mecca of Good Government, to deny their chamber a quorum, (2) mobs of angry state employees trying to bully legislators, (3) trying to defeat Judge Prosser to get a more favorable judge on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, (4) trying to recall enough Republican state senators to give back control to Democrats, (5) litigating the new labor law as "unconstitutional" and failing, and now, (6) trying to recall the governor, lieutenant governor, and three Republican state senators.

The left has pulled out all the plugs to thwart Governor Walker.  In the recall election for six Republican state senators last August, the left spent about $30 million, much of it from outside the state.  But money for this sort of campaign is drying up.  The Wisconsin Education Association Council, which discharged forty percent of its staff when dues reduction became voluntary, spent $500,000 in the August 2011 recall elections. 

The left is expending more than just money.  It is frittering away credibility and the power of intimidation.  

When the state judiciary appears blatantly ideological and hostile to any change proposed by Republicans, then it will be not David Prosser who may be facing tough elections in the future.  At a time when local news media need to win as large an audience as possible to survive, clear bias will lose their bosses revenue. 

Most of all, if the left throws every single weapon it can at Wisconsin Republicans and yet cannot prevent a conservative agenda from becoming law, then the left must know that it is vulnerable everywhere to conservatives who do not back down.  If this last desperate effort of the power-mongers of leftism fails, then their whip may become a wet noodle, and the whole corrupt syndicate of leftism may completely unravel.  

Watch Wisconsin.

American Thinker

The EPA Wrecking Ball

- Alan Caruba   
Wednesday, March 28, 2012 

The Environmental Protection Agency is using its power to advance the objective of the environmental movement to deny Americans access to the energy that sustains the nation’s economy and is using the greatest hoax ever perpetrated, global warming—now called “climate change”—to achieve that goal.

“This standard isn’t the once-and-for-all solution to our environmental challenge,” said Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, “but it is an important commonsense step toward tackling the ongoing and very real threat of climate change and protecting the future for generations to come. It will enhance the lives of our children and our children’s children.”

This is a boldfaced lie. Its newest rule is based on the debasement of science that is characterized and embodied in the global warming hoax. It will deprive America of the energy it requires to function.
Since the 1980s the Greens have been telling everyone that carbon dioxide was causing global warming—now called climate change—and warning that CO2 emissions were going to kill everyone in the world if they weren’t dramatically reduced. The ball was put in motion with the United Nations 1997 Kyoto Protocols when many nations agreed to this absurd idea and carried forward by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ever since.

The Environmental Protection Agency was created to clean the nation’s air and water where it was deemed that a hazard existed. Like most noble ideas and most Congressional mandates, the initial language was vague enough to be interpreted to mean anything those in charge wanted it to mean. Add in the global warming hoax and you have the means to destroy the nation.

Now it means that the source of fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States is being systematically put out of business and please do not act surprised; that’s exactly what Barack Obama said he intended to do if elected President.

This is evil writ large.

Shutting down utilities that use coal, an energy source the U.S. has in such abundance that it could provide electricity for the next hundreds of years, and ensuring that no new ones are built fits in perfectly with all the Green pipedreams about “renewable” energy. Solar and wind presently provide about two percent of the nation’s electricity and, without government subsidies and mandates requiring their use, they would not exist at all.

How stupid is it to not build more nuclear power plants when this form of power doesn’t emit anything but energy?

How stupid is it not to use coal when the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal?

How stupid is it to begin to find reasons to regulate and thwart fracking, the technology to access trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that has been in use for decades?

How stupid is it to cover miles of land, far from any urban center, with hundreds of solar panels or huge, ugly wind turbines that kill thousands of birds every year?

The sun does not shine all the time, nor does the wind blow all the time. In the event of overcast skies or a day without wind, traditional plants—those using coal, gas, nuclear or generating hydroelectric power—have to be maintained as a backup. Take away the coal-fired plants and there were be huge gap in the national grid.

Darkness will descend and Americans will begin to live with blackouts and brownouts that will undermine every aspect of our lives. It’s bad enough when a town or even a city briefly loses power because of a storm, but imagine that occurring on a regular basis because there just aren’t enough utilities generating power!

What kind of people stand by idly while its own government conspires to take away the primary source of energy that everything else depends upon? The answer? You. The answer is the many elected politicians that have done little to rein in a rogue government agency intent on undermining the nation by denying it the ability to generate power with the least expensive source of electricity, coal.

The EPA, an unelected bureaucracy, has just ensured that all Americans, industries, small businesses, and individuals will begin pay far more for electrical power.

Richard J. Trzupek, the author of “Regulators Run Wild” and an environment policy advisor for The Heartland Institute, said of the new rule, “With around 50,000 megawatts of coal-fired power set to be forcibly retired in the next few years—thanks to the draconian policies of Obama’s EPA—this rule ensures that no new modern, efficient coal fired power plants will be built to fill the gap.”

In a triumph of crony capitalism, Trzupek notes that “The big winner will be Obama’s good friend, GE Chairman Jeff Immelt. Since solar and wind cannot fill a 50,000 megawatt baseload gap, the only way to ensure continued reliability of the grid is to build a lot of natural gas-fired plants quickly. And who is the biggest supplier of natural gas-fired combustion engines? GE of course.”

If you think that environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, among many others, are seeking to “protect” the Earth, you are seriously mistaken. They have been among the leading opponents of coal and they have had allies in Congress such as the Majority Leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, (D-NV) who has said “Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick.”

NO! Coal provides the engine of our nation’s electrical power and oil provides the energy that fuels our transportation and is the basis for countless products that enhance and improve our lives every day.

We are witnessing the destruction of the nation by the environmental movement and the EPA has just provided you with the most dramatic example of that plan.

Canada Free Press

'Game Change' Producer Tom Hanks: Everyman Status Revoked

by Chris Bannon

The other morning, I noticed everyone on the MSNBC's "Trader Joe Show" having a slobbering love-fest over the HBO film "Game Change" based on a portion of a book bearing the same name. Even the show's blonde boxing "ring girl," Mika Brzezinski, could not say enough good things about it and expressed great sympathy for the main character. That's when I knew the fix was in, and a bad day was heading our way.
The TV movie's Executive Producer is one Thomas J. Hanks, a man who made his mark and millions by mostly pretending to be someone else. Often times you will hear Hanks referred to as the "Jimmy Stewart" of our time and that is probably a fair comparison given his success in the same industry.

I guess the only significant difference between these two great American "pretenders" is that Stewart graduated from Princeton University and was a highly-decorated WWII Army Air Corps bomber pilot who flew the most dangerous missions over the Hun homeland including the most difficult and tragic "Black Thursday" raid against the Schweinfurt ball bearing plants. Stewart retired from the Air Force Reserve as a Brigadier General.

In comparison, Hanks dropped out of college and pretended to be a soldier in one of his movies.

Now, don't get me wrong, all indications up to this point are that Hanks is a decent guy, a good husband and father and all the important things that count in a man's life. A college dropout done good, he is a great American success story, and he has done very well for himself in his professional-pretending career. Many would consider him one of, if not the best, pretenders in the last 20 years. I am a big fan myself, and I especially like some of his pretending roles best of all, and Hanks has the hardware to back it up.

But unlike the fantasy make-believe world that Hanks and his colleagues thrive in, the real world, beyond Brentwood, is a much more complicated and challenging place. Out here, facts and actions DO matter, and there are consequences for your actions. In our lower paying and terribly uninteresting world (from which Hanks humbly came), your words, your deeds, your record and the company you keep pretty much define who you are.




That is why I was so disappointed by Hanks' latest venture, an unfortunate made-for-TV endeavor. This film is a supposed insider, backroom view to the 2008 Republican ticket written by two guys who were not there. These two supposed journalists used an editorial cover called "deep background" (no named sources ... AKA anonymous sources or, as we call it in middle America, gutless rumor mongering) to avoid having to prove anything in the book is factual or true and to keep from having to finger any liars for lying if they were called out for their lies.
Nice work if you can get it.

The book's changing subtitle is currently "The Race of a Lifetime, How Obama Won the White House" but this movie version somehow forgets to go into that small "Obama" part. The book is 23 chapters in total, and more than half of the book (14 chapters), is focused on the heated Obama-Clinton primary race. Three more chapters are put forth on the Republican primary (yawn), and the final six chapters are about the national election.

So, unlike the great BIG book, the TV movie rendition is completely focused on just the end game six chapters. Even then, the film focused on just the Republican side of the election story and, if that were not enough, in Hanks' film version of the book, he reduces the already greatly reduced story by half - again to only discuss Gov. Sarah Palin. Twenty-three chapters of a book now reduced to a film, telling the story of about 1-2 chapters of the material. Talk about a Cliff Notes version!

Hanks and his hip, Hollywood entourage choose not to tell anything about the bulk of the book story, and they completely ignore the eventual winner and first African-American President. He chose instead to "stalk" Palin yet again. Now we all know what the real life Hanks is all about and what kind of Everyman he ain't.





Only knowing of the happy Hollywood Hanks that the controlled and produced entertainment image machine conjures, I became very discouraged as I watched his B actor-laden show. Its terribly unflattering presentation of a person with a well documented and highly acclaimed record was just contrary to all of the documented history. The deliberate and obviously calculated character assault just choked the life right out of the film and stifled what could have been a fascinating production. In reality and because of her unprecedented success, Palin had been seen by McCain's political operatives as the only person in red state America who could save a floundering Presidential run by an aging, over-the-hill war hero and political cast away.
The operatives were right and in real life and in the movie (however so briefly mentioned), the selection worked and re-energized a stale and stalled campaign as the Governor vaulted the team into the lead and ahead of the new guy who looked great and sounded even better. However, you just get a little taste of that story in the film because that would be a distraction from the bigger and more important agenda.

In Hanks' two-hour TV movie, this highly-successful grass-roots organizer is never depicted in any positive way. Throughout, we are asked to believe that, for a short ten weeks of her life, she suddenly lost the tenacity that earned the former point guard the nickname "Sarah Barracuda." That for 10 lost weeks in the Fall of 2008 Palin has none of the characteristics that gained her the nickname back home of "The Wasilla Warrior."

That even her amazing public appearances and speeches and her great debate victory over the Senatorial sage, Joe "The Weave" Biden, were all carefully orchestrated scripts. All of this contrarian behavior according to unknown, "deep background," unsourced and undocumented political insiders.

So, never in the film do we get an inkling of Palin's anti-establishment, good old boy back breaking exploits that helped gain her the reputation for fighting for the little guy and "Going Rogue" (2 million copies). We are only presented with those deep background, out of the public eye occurrences that just a chosen few would know or witness. A few rare behind-the-scenes events as supposedly relayed from the greasy political mercenary parasites who, during every election cycle, come to feed off of politicians and their financial friends.

Hanks deliberately presents a most unsympathetic and incapable character that is completely contrary to all of her accountings before, during or since. He and his film operatives conjure up a weak, bitchy, often catatonic corpse with few socially redeeming qualities and incapable of any cognizant thoughts of her own.  Detached, depressed and downright rude is the film's preferred depiction.





Instead of a middle-class mom, Hanks tries to turn Palin into one of those gross, repulsive wives from the reality TV shows of Beverly Hills or the OC; people that tend to live and thrive in Hanks' materialistic California world. Palin becomes a Peter Sellers-like Chauncey Gardiner from "Being There"  but on hormones. Who was this body-double Hanks wanted us to believe was the same person the rest of us saw during that brutal ten-week mud pull? The actress who pretends to be the Governor is made up to look like Palin, but she talks like Lennie from Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men."
Somehow in Hanks' film interpretation, the sitting Governor becomes a "Bizarro Palin" where everything in her world was the complete opposite of who she is. Something must have gone terribly wrong in the development of this project for it to drift so far off course. Somehow, some way, it had all boiled down to a favorite target and even then it had gone over the edge and into a deep, dark, bottomless abyss.

How strange, I thought, afterwards. Before Palin arrives in the lower forty-eight for her ten-week national run for the top, she was, by all accounts, a highly successful chief executive and a political shooting star. By age 42, she had been a local council person, won two landslide elections in an Anchorage suburb as Mayor, lost in a primary run for Lt. Governor, been appointed by the standing Governor to sit on the most powerful commission in the State (Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission) from which she resigned on principal because of the cronyism, corruption and conflict within. Took on and whipped the former long-time U.S. Senator and sitting Republican Governor and then did the same to a three-time popular Democratic Governor. Then, after finally getting into the office of Governor, she immediately and relentlessly reformed the corrupt politics of the state and went toe-to-toe with the real power there - "Big Oil" - and by the way, she whopped up on them, too.




What a great story, just like in a great old movie script and the reason why she had an 80 percent approval rating and why she was ultimately called upon to the national stage to try to help snatch victory from a certain defeat. But, in Hanks' Palin-centric version, that person ceases to exist upon arriving in Arizona for an interview with the McCain camp and never exists again till after the election is done. At least not according to the 3-H club, Heileman, Halperin and Hanks.

As we know now,  after her unsuccessful run for the Vice Presidency, Palin magically gets her mojo back and goes on to become the leader (National Community Organizer) of a new major organic national movement called the Tea Party. During that stint, she took the lead, the heat and the acclaim for spearheading the largest national election landslide in modern political history. With her battle cry of "Game on," she fashioned a political donnybrook of which we have not seen in generations.

When all the votes were counted, the conservative Republicans won 63 congressional seats and 6  U. S.  Senate seats, multiple governorships and state houses as many hapless establishment Republicans and even more useless Democrats were swept from office in a tidal wave of voter backlash. The Tea Party Revolution was here to stay and its poster girl, Palin, had taken the challenge with no organization and no money and delivered a knockout.

At the end of the day, the mindless, catatonic, whiney, cry baby of a candidate who Hanks and company wants us to buy into, steamrolled the popular sitting President and his power-grabbing Capitol Hill cronies like no one before and she did it for all the world to see.  How lucky for them that none of this talent and chutzpah existed during the lost ten weeks of 2008. That could have been ugly, and Hanks may have never gotten a chance to produce that glitzy infomercial.

That 2010 election stunner verified what the dangerous Klansmen on the left already new. This girl is not conventional, she was incredibly relevant to a lot of folks out there and that makes her a dangerous threat to their enslaving entitlement ways. Therefore, she must be stopped and by any means necessary.  Intimidation, character assassination, fabrication are just a few of the tactics that have been and will be deployed. Bankrupt her, beat her down, destroy her family, go to the ends of the earth to find anyone with a grudge.  Even better,  just make stuff up and call it "deep background."

Like Clarence Thomas before her, Palin gets an electronic lynching by the mindless media morons and  their special interest shock troops. If successful the slash and burn, march to the sea plan would leave nothing but a smoldering mound of ash where hope and promise had burned so brightly. And now we know, that our Hanks and his little TV film are part and parcel of that dastardly plan.

We thought, based on his pretend film characters and his spotless Hollywood reputation, that he was a man of chivalry, a man who would stand up to injustice and call out the bullies with us. He is, after all, known for his depictions of ordinary characters in extraordinary circumstances. But to our disappointment, Hanks took the low road and went "all in" with the unfortunate dark and corrupt forces of personal destruction.

For his part, Hanks goes above and beyond in his loathing portrayal of someone who, like him, overcame all the odds to achieve the American dream. Hard work, tenacity and determination made Hanks and Palin successful, and nobody ever handed them anything. But those virtues are only vices to Hanks now; a man on a different kind of mission.

The saddest part of this story is not Palin but that of Hanks. You see, he was in charge, and he could have risen to the occasion to be as great a producer as he is an actor. He could have taken this Capra-esque story and seized the moment to be heroic, but he passed on all that to instead be cool and loved and "with" the in-crowd. A great producer would have recognized the opportunity of a lifetime that this whole story presented. A first take on a strong, female character. Great characters in the form of the first African American candidate, a former first lady, the first Republican woman on the ticket and a certified American war hero. All of that in the midst of a world financial meltdown.

Trust me, material like that does not come along very often. But instead, Hanks, with his smirking co-conspirators by his side, decided to reduce it to the tabloid trash that it is and the very stuff he, of all people, should revile the most.

A simple question could have solved all of this. Did Heilemann & Halperin get it right, or did they just hear what they wanted to hear because of their own pre-disposition? Did it ever occur to anyone, especially Hanks, that McCain's political manager, Steve Schmidt, and crew, ran a terrible campaign for a very marginal candidate and that they, in fact, needed a scape goat to cover their professional tracks ? Did the authors of the book ever wonder why nobody wanted to go on the record ? The whole thing just stinks.

The unfortunate truth here is that nobody in the food chain wanted to know the truth, so everyone involved fell into line and turned all their guns on Palin, no questions asked. By doing so, they have lost any credibility as journalists, as political experts, as filmmakers and honest brokers.

Truth is stranger than fiction and like they say in the news biz ... you can't write this stuff.  I and millions of Tommy's fans are disgusted by it all. We have been deceived and now we see the real Hanks fully exposed from behind the curtain. He is not the humble, "aw, shucks" guy we have been sold by the Hollywood media machine. He is, in fact, just another pompous, self-important pretender who thinks his unique pretending ability gives him license to pontificate.

Sadly, now, millions of us have taken Hanks off of his pedestal and moved him onto the back shelf as we have had to do with some of our other favorite artists. Yeah, that multi-millionaire perspective on us poor working stiffs is incredibly annoying and inappropriate but then again it seems to be a neat little hobby for the snobby jet-setting crowd. Super rich elite "one percenters" fighting the man and acting like they know something about us and our every day muddled middle-class lives. Spare us the pity and outrage and stop embarrassing yourselves by trying to channel the working class blues from your Malibu mansions. From out here in the hinterland, it looks terribly self serving.

You see, when you cut through it all, you guys got some real shortcomings, too, if you know what I mean, and the further you stray off the very produced and protected farm, the more obvious it becomes to the rest of us.

A lot of time and money goes into creating those fabulous facades of fame, so why risk popping that beautiful bubble Hollywood has built for you? At the end of the day, we are a lot smarter than you all think, and some of us actually graduated from high school and college. As distracted as we are making our way everyday, we will find a way to figure it out. You guys make great art and we will take care of the heavy lifting and that makes the nation great. We will show up, turn to and get it done just like we have for generation, with big shoulders and bigger hearts.

It's a free country, and you certainly have the right to state your opinion; but for the record, Tom, where we come from, your high-profile success does not give you the right to manufacture, manipulate and mock someone else's accomplishments and reputation. We call that a "bully," and we are the ones who will step in and take on a bully every single time, no matter what.

The elite progressive pedigree that you hang with seem to think they can beat down anyone and everyone if they are so inclined, and that it is their right and duty to do so. But trust me on this, they would be wrong.

They better be very, very careful going down this path because in America, we live for the comeuppance and when it comes, it is a most beautiful thing.

Thanks, Tom, for your great performances; it has been a pleasure to witness a master at his craft. I'm just sorry it had to end like this. I am certain you and your cast will win many awards for your unfortunate little film, but like all things Hollywood, it, too, is a phony, fixed outcome created to make the most insecure among us feel relevant and good about themselves. I know you said one time in talking about being successful in the Hollywood that "unless you can be ruthless too, there is a good chance that you are going to disappear off the scene pretty quickly." Well, you nailed that one, bubba and I'm sure you will get an award nomination in the ruthless category this year.

I am just glad to see that you are still getting quality work with those infomercials. I know it's not a made-for-TV movie, but a man's gotta eat. Who knows, this could be a whole new genre for you . No offense intended, Tom, and I hope none is taken. We just see things differently out here in the vast doldrums past Palm Springs. It's "just the facts, ma'am" as the incorruptible Jack Webb character, Sergeant Joe Friday used to say back in the day.

But in this unfortunate case, the story is not true, and the names were not changed to protect the innocent. But you already knew that.

Big Hollywood

Obama Just Can’t Resist Injecting Race into Any Situation

- Doug Patton  
Tuesday, March 27, 2012 

“If I had son, he’d look like Trayvon.” —  Barack Obama,

When members of the New Black Panther Party stood menacingly with night sticks, intimidating white voters at polling places in Philadelphia, Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, turned a blind eye. Nothing to see; nothing to investigate.

But when a mouthy Harvard professor was stopped and questioned by police as he attempted to break into a home that later turned out to be his own, the President of the United States thought it was somehow appropriate for him to opine to the media that the police had “acted stupidly.” Why? Because the professor was black, of course, and the police were white. It even called for a “beer summit,” remember?

White legislators in Arizona or Alabama must be conspiring to commit racism if they pass state laws enforcing our federal immigration regulations. But a Muslim Army Major who executes innocent people in cold blood while shouting “god is great” in Arabic is just a confused loner.

Brave rebels are slaughtered in the streets of Tehran and Obama tells the world that “both sides” should remain calm. Muslim Brotherhood terrorists lead revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and Obama is all too eager to back their efforts — regardless of the consequences to the United States or our allies. 

Far from being a post-racial president, Barack Obama has been the most divisive leader we have had in the last half-century. All he seems to know is that no matter the circumstances, it’s America’s fault — and furthermore, it’s white America’s fault.

Now comes the Trayvon Martin case. No one yet knows what actually happened on the night of February 26, when George Zimmerman shot 17-year-old Martin to death in a gated community in Sanford, Florida — but Barack Obama knows that if he had a son, he would look just like Trayvon. So what? How does that advance the case? How does it do anything but stir up racial animosity? Is the image in our national consciousness supposed to be that the president’s son (if he had one) would have been killed? Why would he say such a thing? Initially, he was willing to let local authorities investigate, but when a reporter shouted a question about the case, he was all too ready to answer.

Among the few things we do know is that Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, informed police the individual he had spotted appeared to be casing the homes in the neighborhood and that he looked as if he might be on drugs.

We know that Zimmerman has not been charged with anything after citing Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which allows an individual to use deadly force if he or she feels threatened by another person. We also know that the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world have proclaimed that Zimmerman is guilty. No trial needed. No evidence presented. No witnesses called. Just guilty.

But now an eyewitness has stepped forward who claims that it was, in fact, self defense. Apparently, the witness claims he saw Martin on top of Zimmerman, beating him. Was this the catalyst for the subsequent shooting? If so, how inconvenient for the Sharpton-Jackson-Obama narrative.

What is not known — but will be investigated, assuming the president and his race-baiting friends don’t poison the well — are the exact circumstances that led to the shooting death of Martin by Zimmerman that night.

Thanks to the circus the president has helped incite, if Zimmerman is indicted, it will be next to impossible for him to receive a fair trial. And if he is not indicted, he may have to change his name and disappear. Whatever the outcome of the investigation, our Community Agitator in Chief has helped to ensure that George Zimmerman is a marked man. That’s what agitators do.

Canada Free Press

GOP: Obama's 'Flexibility' Remark Shows He's a Flip-Flopper

Tuesday, 27 Mar 2012 12:35 PM

By Dan Weil

Republicans are forcing President Barack Obama to pay a political price for telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he will have more “flexibility” on missile defense policy after November’s election.

The remark has enabled the GOP not only to label the president a flip-flopper but also to pose the ominous question: What else is he hiding until after the election?

The comment also weakens the Obama campaign’s effort to portray Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney as a flip-flopper after a Romney aide said he will reset his general election campaign like an Etch A Sketch toy.

Obama, at a nuclear summit in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday, told Medvedev over a microphone he didn’t realize was live, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility on missile policy."

Hours after the statement, the Republican National Committee produced a video called “After the Election,” challenging the president’s intentions. “What else is on Obama’s agenda after the election that he isn’t telling you?” the video says.

Story continues below the video.

Romney said in a statement, “The American people have a right to know where else he plans to be ‘flexible’ in a second term. Russia is not a friendly character on the world stage. This is a president who is telling us one thing and doing something else.”

Newsmax

Supreme Court to Decide if the U.S. Constitution Is a Dead Letter

March 27, 2012
By Bob Marshall

By tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court will have spent six hours hearing oral argument over a three-day period about the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare.  After the argument on Tuesday, the Court will address the question: "Whether Congress had the power under Article I of the Constitution to enact the minimum coverage provision."  That sterile statement of the issue on which the Court granted certiorari vastly understates the significance of this case.  The truth is that this case will determine whether there are any meaningful limitations on Congress' power to mandate an individual's life choices.

When Congress' power under Article I, Section 8 -- power to "regulate commerce ... among the several states" (Clause 3) -- has been paired with Congress' power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into executing the foregoing powers" (Clause 18), the result has been the virtually unlimited power of Congress to dominate the everyday behavior of the American people, in direct conflict with the plain language of the Tenth Amendment reserving such powers to the state and to the people.

In large part, it is the combination of the "commerce" and "necessary and proper" clauses that have led many to conclude that the Constitution is a dead letter to our generation -- that the battle was lost before most of us were born.  How profoundly sad.  Indeed, the Sunday morning pundits believe that the ObamaCare challenge is already lost.  Well, they may hope that it is lost, but I have a different view.

I have been in the trenches against ObamaCare since before it was enacted.  In late 2009 I wrote an article against the individual mandate for the Richmond Times Dispatch.  In January 2010, I authored the Virginia Healthcare Freedom Act that our attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, used to file suit against the Obama administration.  On April 4, 2011, I filed an amicus brief in the Fourth Circuit to support that challenge to ObamaCare.  I explained this brief to the House of Delegates on April 4, 2011.  My wife and I attended oral argument, and we saw the case presented to three Democrat-appointed judges on the Fourth Circuit panel.  

In their opinion, those judges impugned the integrity of those of us who were working against this law, and then decided that since the Commonwealth of Virginia was a mere state, it did not have standing to challenge the law.  Then I filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court urging the Court to grant certiorari on November 3, 2011 -- a petition that is still pending. 

When the Supreme Court decided to hear the challenge from the Eleventh Circuit, on February 13, 2012, I filed yet another brief on the merits in that case.  In each of these briefs, where I was joined by other concerned individuals and organizations, we have urged the Court to re-examine the text of the Commerce Clause -- and to ignore its flawed decisions in this area. 

Why am I somewhat optimistic?  While the Constitution is my passion, learning the parliamentary and political skills to stop bad laws has been one of my main activities for the 21 years I have served in the Virginia General Assembly, and before that for six years as a congressional aide to three members of Congress.  To learn how power is abused, I studied history, including how FDR manipulated Congress to get the New Deal around the Court, and it is not a pretty picture.  My recent amicus brief presents this story to the Supreme Court in unvarnished fashion.

In a nutshell, frustrated by the Supreme Court's decisions blocking many of his early New Deal initiatives, FDR launched a political attack on the court.  As explained in his March 1937 Fireside Chat, FDR's Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 would add up to six additional justices to the Supreme Court.  He didn't have to wait long for the Court to fold its hand.  In April 1937 Justice Owen Roberts became the "switch in time that saved the nine."  And it was in the unprincipled cases that followed that the Court aided and abetted FDR's unconstitutional revolution towards a federal government of unlimited powers.  Since then, in effect, the majority in Congress and the Court have sat as a standing Constitutional Convention in defiance of the will of the People, undermining the very nature of a written constitution.  Sometimes big cases lead to big decisions, and this may be the case that returns us to the original plan.

In its ObamaCare briefs, the government relies heavily on the properly ridiculed 1942 Supreme Court case of Wickard v. Filburn, which upheld a bureaucratic decision dictating the amount of wheat that a farmer grew for his family and his livestock, even though the wheat never traveled in or had any connection to interstate commerce.  This was not a decision reached on the legal merits.  Rather, it was the product of an unprecedented exercise of raw political power by President Roosevelt.

Shedding light on this dismal past may embarrass the Court into doing the right thing.

I hold out hope that if the Court focuses on how it was manipulated into its current jurisprudence, it just might be willing to re-examine whether it erred. 

One of the great problems is that if the Supreme Court goes off-track long enough, those who agree with the policy result raise the defense of stare decisis -- the legal principle by which courts follow the precedent of prior cases.  It is for this reason that lawyers who argue before the Supreme Court seem to discuss only rarely the original text of the Constitution, instead often analyzing Supreme Court decisions.  However, the Constitution is what the Founders said it was -- not what the Court says it is. 

But there are times when the Court recognizes that it went off-track, or allowed lower courts to do so, and chooses to return to the text of the Constitution.  We have seen two instances of this recently, where the country is better off because the Court re-examined precedent in light of the Constitutional text. 

In the 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court re-examined the "prevailing wisdom" that the Second Amendment protected only a "collective right" which protected state Guards, and not a right that individuals enjoyed.  After an extensive textual and contextual analysis, the Court reached a decision consistent with the Founders, even if inconsistent with prior Court decisions.  In the Antoine Jones case in January 2012, the Supreme Court re-examined over 40 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence that transformed the Fourth Amendment's "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" into a judicially invented right to privacy, and returned the Fourth Amendment to its property foundation.  These were brave, principled decisions. 

Sam Walter Foss's famous poem "The Calf-Path" illustrates from nature the utter folly of failing to re-examine periodically why we do what we do: "By one calf near three centuries dead.  They follow still his crooked way, And lose one hundred years a day, For thus such reverence is lent, To well-established precedent."

The Roberts Court has a demonstrated record of looking past prior decisions to the constitutional text. 
So I have reasons to be hopeful that the Supreme Court of 2012 will refuse to follow that calf-path established in 1941 by a politically cowed Justice Owen Roberts, now five decades dead, and will re-examine the constitutional text, thereby forcing the federal government back to the limited role that our Founders wanted it to have.

(See also: The Constitution, 'Constitutional Law,' and ObamaCare)
Robert G. Marshall is a senior member of the Virginia House of Delegates, serving his 11^th consecutive term.  He was the chief patron of the Virginia Healthcare Freedom Act and filed three amicus curiae briefs against ObamaCare in federal courts.  He is a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Virginia.  Follow him on Twitter @BobMarshall2012.

American Thinker

Obama Whispers Away America's Security

Mike Gonzalez

It is hard to overstate the dangerous implications of what happened this week when President Obama was caught by an open mic sending a message to Russia's dictator-in-waiting to wait quietly till after the November elections, after which Mr. Obama could make concessions on America's national defense. The White House is trying to explain this incident away as par for the course in an electoral year. It is not.

Here, in essence, is what it appears to be: this was our commander in chief in league with an anti-American autocrat to dupe the American public until after it's too late. What makes it even worse is that the issue at hand--missile defense--has to do with protecting the American people against the likes of Russia.

We don't need to exaggerate what happened. All we need is to review what Obama, our President, was caught telling Russia's current president, Dmitri Medvedev, while the two met at the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea. Neither man knew the microphones were live and picked up their exchange. Here it is:

President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it's important for him to give me space.

President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you...

President Obama: (reaching over and putting his hand on Mr. Medvedev's knee): This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.

President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

The Vladimir in question is none other than Vladimir Putin, who just won elections in Russia this month under a cloud of suspicion, to replace Mr. Medvedev, who has been a fig leaf president for the past four years while Mr. Putin has wielded power from his post as prime minister.

Mr. Putin, who has been open and public in his disdain for both the United States and President Obama in particular, opposes American foreign policy from Syria to Asia to Latin America. He is the poster child for a new breed of authoritarian world leaders who openly want to thwart America's intentions. Most recently, Putin used hostile rhetoric toward the United States as a tool in his re-election campaign, labeling opposition leaders puppets of the CIA. That followed Russia's decision at the United Nations Security Council to veto a U.S.-backed resolution calling for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to step aside.

The President's surreptitious hat-tip to Putin comes at a dangerous time for the American people and U.S. allies. North Korea is preparing to launch yet another long-range missile, and Iran is in desperate pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Meanwhile, the United States and its allies remain unprotected from the threat of nuclear missiles, and now it appears that Obama wants to cede even more ground to Russia on vital national security issues.

The President, probably sensing the potential gravity of the situation, quickly addressed the incident. He tried to defend himself yesterday by saying:

Frankly, the current environment is not conducive to those kinds of thoughtful consultations. The stories you guys have been writing over the last 24 hours is probably pretty good evidence of that. I think we'll do better in 2013.

But this is not how democracy works. In asking Mr. Medvedev to tell Mr. Putin to "give me space" until he can be more flexible next year if he gets re-elected this November, Mr. Obama was clearly telegraphing the willingness to give Mr. Putin at least part of what he wants on missile defense. This President has already given too much. In the New START strategic nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, President Obama agreed that U.S. missile defense capabilities must be reduced along with strategic nuclear weapons -- essentially laying down America's arms and its shield, as well.

Now it appears that President Obama wishes to go even a step farther in order to appease Mr. Putin. Where that step leads, we truly don't know. All we can see is the direction the President is already headed.

The exchange with Mr. Medvedev, lastly, only deepens and validates two already extant and related narratives about our President: one is that he harbors views that are inimical to the American people and only come out in unguarded moments. An example of that is when he said in San Francisco four years ago that Americans cling to their religion and guns bitterly when they're afraid of the future. The other narrative is that the President will be unshackled once (and if) he is re-elected, and will put in place a plan far more radical than he is letting on in public at the moment.

If concessions to Russia on missile defense are what Mr. Obama wants, he can make his case to the American people and ask them to endorse his policies. To hide them until it is too late and he is safely ensconced in office is unseemly.

 Heritage

The Empathizer-in-Chief Needs to Do Some Serious Soul-Searching

March 26, 2012
By Lauri B. Regan

As a mother, my capacity for empathy does not stop at only those who physically resemble my children.  

Sadly, the president, who touts empathy as one of the most important qualifications for a Supreme Court justice, signals  that his capacity for empathy does not extend to all American citizens, but is focused on those of African-American descent or Muslim heritage.

While there were all sorts of indications that Obama was entering office with personal biases, the first hint that these would play a role in his decisions as POTUS was when his Justice Department dropped the charges against the New Black Panthers charged with voter intimidation for swinging billy clubs at voting sites in 2008.

This was followed in 2009 by Obama jumping into the fray when, without any basis for doing so, he announced to the country that the Cambridge Police "acted stupidly" for arresting a black professor.  Despite the faux pas and the need to smooth things over with a ridiculously staged "beer summit," Obama never conducted any soul-searching.  How do we know this?  Because he has once again, without any evidence whatsoever, thrown himself into the middle of the latest controversy stirred up by the mainstream media and infamous race-baiting rabble-rousers.

In the face of the horrible shooting of a black teenager in Florida, Obama chose to go off the teleprompter to share his empathy for the boy's family, stating, "You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."  Once again, Obama has made race the issue in a controversy.

And while the White House originally indicated that Obama would not make a statement on this situation due to a fear that it would see a replay of the Gates fiasco, "staffers and Democratic operatives interviewed Wednesday said the shooting has been a hot topic inside the West Wing - and that Obama is monitoring the situation closely."  If the White House believes that Americans will take comfort in the fact that among his perpetual campaigning, vacations, golf games, and rap concerts, the POTUS has time to closely monitor this situation while also presumably monitoring Iran's march to nuclear capability, Syria's revolution, the Arab Spring, rising oil prices, and the U.S. economic "recovery," it has confirmed its complete disconnect with reality.

For while the media enjoys a good racial controversy, Obama should have conducted some soul-searching back in 2009 and realized that his role should be one of peacemaker, not warmonger.  With that one statement, Obama is stoking racial warfare in which the likes of Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, and Jesse Jackson have all joined the hype to turn this into an ugly and inflammatory situation.  And the New Black Panthers who were not worthy of prosecution for voter intimidation are now distributing posters at rallies calling for the shooter to be hauled in "Dead or Alive."  But alas, the man who is hung up on the fact that he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills" would rather stoke racial tensions than call for calm.  He would rather telephone Sandra Fluke in order to fuel a controversy that he views as politically expedient than call Farrakhan, Sharpton, and Jackson requesting civility and non-violence.

Without all of the facts to conclusively determine what transpired the night that Martin was shot, Obama went farther and told Americans that "[a]ll of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how something like this has happened."  One would imagine that coming from the man who claims that "[w]e are God's partners in matters of life and death," soul-searching would not be necessary in order to determine that a tragedy occurs every time an innocent person dies, notwithstanding his skin color.

And therein lies the problem.  Does Barack Obama view every single black person as an innocent victim while white people are guilty simply because of their skin color?  And what other groups does Obama perhaps view as guilty simply due to ethnicity?  The last time Obama dictated to an entire culture that it must engage in self-reflection was just over a year ago, when he told Israelis to "search your souls" over their seriousness to achieve peace with the Palestinians.  Seriously.  Obama chose to call out Israelis who have made repeated concessions and offers of peace, who have faced 12,000 rockets launched at them since unilaterally pulling their own people out of Gaza and relinquishing control to the Palestinians, and who continually search their souls to figure out how to end thousands of years of scapegoating and demonization.

Much has been written about Obama's background -- his upbringing, relationships, and advisors -- that may have led to his apparent hostility to white people, who "cling to guns or religions," as well as to the very existence of the State of Israel, which he seems to blame for all of the problems in the Mideast if not the entire world.  I will not address that.  However, there is a clear pattern in Obama's behavior and in his limiting his empathy to only those with black skin and reaching out only to those who practice the Muslim faith.

Beginning abroad, while Israelis must search their souls, Obama has never once told Syria's Assad that it is time for him to look within.  In the face of Iran's Ahmadinejad killing his own people after the 2009 rigged elections and continually promising to wipe Israel off the face of the map, Obama has continued to reach out rather than suggest that a bit of soul-searching might be required.  And while the SCOTUS justices must exhibit empathy in order to be worthy of their position, the Muslim Brotherhood, the grandfathers of Islamic terror, need not become peaceful leaders who respect the rights of the Egyptian people and the Jews next door.  In response to the M.B. promising to never recognize Israel and the Egyptian Parliament declaring Israel its "number one enemy," Obama once again sidestepped the Constitution's separation of powers and awarded the terrorists with $1.5 billion of U.S. military aid.

Here at home, violence occurs regularly.  Over Saint Patrick's Day weekend in Chicago, there were 49 victims of gunshots.  Silence from Obama despite the fact that the violence occurred in his hometown and in the area that Michelle claims is the derivation of their family values.  Could it be that the killing of a black person warrants Obama "monitoring the situation closely" only when the shooter is a half-or-more-white person?

And what about when the victims are members of the U.S. military and the shooter is a Muslim who yells "Allahu Akbar" during his murdering spree?  While the murders at Fort Hood drew national attention due to their heinous and shocking nature, Obama refused to give the victims Purple Hearts, denying that the attack was an act of terrorism.  So the president, who applies his own racial biases to infer that certain black victims are the subject of hate crimes, applies his religious biases to prevent victims of Islamic terror from receiving the recognition they so clearly deserve.

Obama's silence has also been deafening in the face of OWSers who hold anti-Semitic signs and call out hateful statements.  He has never once condemned the hateful misogynist and violent lyrics of his favorite rappers who glorify drug use and murder.  He has continually stoked class warfare, racial division, and hate in a desire to either win re-election or cause mass violence, leading to a transformed America.

But in light of his silence in the face of 20 years of Jeremiah Wright's "God damn America," this is not surprising.  It is offensive.  Obama has the audacity to lecture Americans and Israelis and is incapable of self-reflection.  He is self-righteous and arrogant, displaying moral superiority as he exhibits clear antipathy for anyone who does not fit within his own notion of deserving empathy.

What this country needs is a leader who will sow the seeds of peaceful free speech rather than violence reminiscent of the 1960s, who will unify rather than divide, who is colorblind rather than color-obsessed, and who is willing to recognize the exceptional nature of the American people and its allies rather than continually admonish and chastise.  What we don't need is Barack Obama.

American Thinker

Obama to Putin: I'll Surrender America After Re-election

by Joel B. Pollak

Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that an open microphone caught President Barack Obama telling outgoing Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he would be prepared to yield to Russian demands on missile defense after his re-election, but needed more "space" until then.

The two leaders were meeting in Seoul, South Korea, and Medvedev immediately promised to relay

Obama's message to incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin:

President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.
President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

President Obama has repeatedly backed down on missile defense in the face of Russian demands, most famously abandoning American promises of cooperation with Poland and the Czech Republic in 2009.

Republican opponents warn that Obama will follow an even more radical course in his second term than his first, because he will no longer face the same electoral pressures that saw his party lose control of the House of Representatives in 2010.

Big Peace

Sinister Liberal Version of “Natural Law” is a Perverse, Anti-Constitutional Hoax

Kelly OConnell 
 Sunday, March 25, 2012 

Everywhere today ring the shrill cries of liberals demanding “justice” for various groups—the poor, women, minorities, for environmental concerns, etc. This call sounds familiar since it resembles America’s traditional support for the destitute, widowed and orphaned. It’s a constant demand to do the “right” thing, as defined by leftism. Yet, on closer inspection, this appeal is not based upon any coherent theory of justice like “Natural Law.” In fact, it’s the exact opposite of traditional Western theory. Instead, this clever ploy manipulates the naive, proving a foil against Conservatism. So this sneaky tactic must be exposed as a hoax since following this charade has proved extraordinarily destructive.

One of the most obvious and predictable aspects of modern Marxist morality is how often public figures and prominent intellectuals slump into its welcoming arms when describing how things should work. This strange default sense insinuates real justice resides in the claims of leftism, wherever identified. For example, consider how multi-billionaire Warren Buffet morphed into an acolyte of economic justice, demanding other rich be forced to “pay their fair share” despite knowing they already do, while dodging billions in his own tax bills. This absurd and misleading gamesmanship is a mirage of ethical rectitude, opposite of the real Natural Law—used by the Founders to frame our Declaration and Constitution.

I. The Problem: Liberal “Natural Law” is a False Appeal to Fairness & Justice

A. No Good Life Without a Sound Theory of Justice

In classical rhetoric, a standard ancient debate involved the nature of the “Good Life.” But today it doesn’t seem to occur to leftists that there could ever be a debate over any important subject. The majority of liberal rhetoric involves broadcasting damning statements regarding society, then claiming those refusing liberal antidotes are shameful cretins. This should be seen for what it is—a fake appeal to “justice,” done in the style of Natural Law, but substituting Marxist standards as the goal. Yet, such manipulations are highly effective because most people want to do the right thing. The destructive power in this game results as Marxism is the actual opposite of Western values, a toxic substitute to life’s problems.

B. Ted Kennedy, Liberal Loudspeaker

The classic instance of such an appeal is found in Ted Kennedy’s sanctimonious 1980 DNC Convention speech. He said,

My fellow Democrats and my fellow Americans, I have come here tonight not to argue as a candidate but to affirm a cause. I’m asking you—I am asking you to renew the commitment of the Democratic Party to economic justice. I am asking you to renew our commitment to a fair and lasting prosperity that can put America back to work.

C. Marxist Justice Versus Western Theories

1. A Transparent Lack of a Marxist Moral Code

An indisputable problem is raised for those comparing Marxism/ Socialism with rival theories. There is simply no exception-less moral center in Marxism as found in traditional Western beliefs. No socialist or Marxist analog to the Ten Commandments. Therefore, it’s impossible for Marxists to call out anyone else for not living up to “Marxist standards,” since there technically aren’t any.
This explains a strange phenomenon in the leftist manipulation game. For, when socialists excoriate others for failing to follow “just standards,” they always appeal to the ideals espoused by the target of this criticism. Recall how famed community organizer Saul Alinsky advised in his infamous Rules for Radicals:

Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

2. Marxist Scholars Reveal Lack of Central Morality

One searches in vain for a “Socialist Ten Commandments,” that is—a central, unbreakable statement of Marxist laws. If it existed, such a leftist exposition of Marxist-derived Natural Law could be used to build a defensible ethical model. Instead, such books as Marxism and Morality: A Critical Examination of Marxist Ethics; Marxism and Morality; Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice; Their Morals And Ours: Marxist Versus Liberal Views On Morality; Marxist Ethics: A Short Exposition, etc—all testify to the utter absence of a true moral center in leftism from Marxist’s own mouths.

II. Problems in Pseudo-Natural Law Policy

But why is Marxism a false theory of justice? Well, how can anyone who stands for no firm ethical outline give anyone else grief over moral hypocrisy? Consider the following: First, the Declaration states just Government is built upon defense of “Life, Liberty, & Happiness”—a phrase taken from John Locke’s “Life, Liberty and Property.” Further, the US Constitution absolutely protects citizens from any government takings of property without compensation or due process—5th Amendment “...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Yet, socialism calls for economic justice, in the form of redistributive payments, influenced by Marx’s line from the Critique of the Gotha Program: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” This requires property be taken from its owner without any recompense. This not only goes against foundational US law but, just as important—repudiates historical experience, common sense and basic fairness.

So, the main problem with Marxist theories of justice is that no absolute standard of the just was ever established by Karl Marx. Instead, his universal goal was the creation of holy revolution, somehow convinced things always improve after revolution. Now we must ask—What problems occur when liberals are allowed to influence and set policy in the name of Marxist morality? Let’s examine some policies adapted out of Marxist theory.

III. The Real Natural Law is Not a Codeword for Socialism

A. Defining Natural Law

What is the Natural Law, and why is it important? Concisely, because the Western theory of law and government is founded upon such ideas as the Rule of Law, Natural Rights & Constitutionalism, it is irreplaceably important. And this theory produced the fairest and most influential legal system ever conceived.
Certain elements provide a general outline. First, Natural Law has an essential moral element. Second, it usually encompasses biblical norms. Third, Natural Law takes on its characteristic elements via such thinkers as Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Locke, etc. Fourth, it is quite often presented as “Higher Law,” or the “Law Above the Law” and placed in opposition to a mere positive law regime.

B. Classic Definition of Natural Law

Natural Law is defined here by Hugo Grotius in De Jure Belli Ac Pacis, ie On the Law of War and Peace:

The law of nature [ius naturale] is a dictate of right reason which points out that an act, according as it is or is not in conformity with rational [and social] nature, has in it a quality of moral baseness or moral necessity; and that, in consequence, such an act is either forbidden or enjoined by the author of nature, God.

C. American Legal Roots as Natural Law

We correctly identify the US Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights as all quintessential Natural Law documents. Writes one author in Introduction to American Founding & Constitutionalism,

The prominence of natural rights in Early Modern thinkers played a crucial role for the founding documents of the American Republic. This rhetoric appears in the resolutions of the first Continental Congress in appeal to ‘the immutable laws of nature,’ and in the affirmation of the ‘unalienable rights’ of man in the Declaration of Independence. The Founders sought to secure the liberty and autonomy of citizens of the American Republic, and the Constitution and Bill of Rights display these inviolable rights of man.

D. Modern Liberal View of Natural Law

Many modern elites demand wholesale changes to the Constitution, or treat it as an irritating anachronism, only fit to be ignored. For instance, recall this exchange with then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (video):

Reporter: “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?
Pelosi: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
Reporter: “Yes, yes I am.”

IV. Modern Man-Made Disasters of Marxist “Natural Law”

Following are problems caused by socialism replacing Natural Law.

A. State-Destroying Deficits

Deficits are now claimed “necessary” Marxist-styled social welfare spending, despite America’stechnical insolvency. President Obama gathered more debt in three years than President Bush did in eight, and will create $20 trillion in deficits. Critics claim any serious cuts, other than military, will “break the middle class.” But, if left unabated on Obama’s spending schedule, when will America stop being the world’s greatest economy? What will we have gained in exchange?

B. Increasing Application of Welfare Remedies

Given the length of the current recession, a direct result of poor economic policy, welfare spending is the highest ever, and rising:

Government dependence is a staggering 47%, highest level in American history, while 21 million households use food stamps. Government spending on food stamps in 2010 ($68 billion), double 2007, with 2011 to be even higher.

The question here, of course, is not how many were saved by welfare — since people do not starve to death in modern America — but how many promising lives were permanently derailed?

C. Regarding Earth as Absurdly Delicate

The leftist notion that earth is itself a living being (Gaia) which must be defended from the slightest “injury” is not derived from analytic science. Instead, this notion coalesced in the vacuum after departure of traditional religious belief. In fact, liberalism itself is a religion. (see Modern Liberalism’s Hidden Religious Foundations & The Sacrifices of the Religion of Liberalism)
The nonsensical fealty Obama directs towards Environmental & Global Warming cabals badly damages American energy independence while gasoline prices skyrocket. This is all a direct result of adherence to nonsensical Marxist ideology (Peak Oil Scam is Based Upon Ideological, Fact-Blind Liberalism, Global Warming hoax response reveals Obama’s shaky mental acumen & Global Warming Theory Not New, But Simple Reborn Malthusianism), seen most recently in his rejections of the 1.1 million barrel-a-day Keystone Pipeline. (see Malice in Wonderland as Barack’s Presidency Finally Runs Out of Gas).

D. Families Defined by State Action

It is a Marxist truism that even children have the right of free sexual expression; whereas adults may divorce ipso facto for any reason, or none. Since the 1960s, the number of common STD’s has leapt from 2 to 25. Meanwhile, half of adult Americans are single. The NY Times reports more children now born out of wedlock, than in it—as statistics show the jaw-dropping effects of fatherlessness. Marx would be thrilled as US institutions substitute as permanent parents.

E. Obamacare Cost

Universal healthcare is the greatest Marxist trope. Whether Obamacare is constitutional will be decided soon by SCOTUS. But it will break the bank, as its projected costs just doubled.

From 2013-2022, the CBO reports, costs of Obamacare are $1.76 trillion, twice the phony original number. It gets worse. Annual gross costs after 2021 are more than a quarter of $1 trillion every year—until the end of time. That, for a new entitlement in a country already drowning in $16 trillion of debt.

Conclusion

Liberal demands to redistribute wealth, etc. must never be accepted as axiomatically true, like Natural Law. Such demands must be treated like the toxic Marxist propaganda they are, and resisted strenuously, if the West is to survive at all.

Canada Free Press