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Posts Tagged ‘Progressive’

Remember the 2011 StimuBus?

by Bunk X ( 117 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Bigotry, Communism, Elections 2012, Free Speech, government, History, Open thread, Politics, Progressives, SCOTUS, Socialism at October 31st, 2012 - 11:00 am

What seems like a very long time ago we posted this, lifted from Doug Ross’ Journal. I thought it was funny at the time without realizing that it was not an image from a Third World Country, but one that was right here in the US of A.
The number at the top of the StimuBus (347) is a New York phone exchange.

[UPDATE: SEE CORRECTION BELOW]

Okay, that’s Che on the left, but who’s the orange asshole on the right? Tookie?

I watched D’Souza‘s documentary “2016” recently and I recommend it to everyone regardless of political affiliation.

Are you a Liberal? See it. Are you a Paulian? See it. Are you an Independent because you can’t make up your mind what you believe in? See it. Worship purple hamsters and track the equinox? See it. Is your name Charles Johnson? (OK Charles, you don’t have to see it until Media Matters tells you to and approves your thumb print but you ought to see it anyway and not tell them.

Watch it, then re-review the published outrage from the Left -  that a man of color (D’Souza) would dare to promote a documentary that questions the indoctrinated beliefs of a half-white President who was abandoned by his own father and raised by people who instructed him in in the finer points of Collectivism. D’Souza’s documentary illustrates with civility and respect, and is choreographed with Obama’s own words.

Once the trash starts to stink, it’s past time to throw it out.

[CORRECTION: The "Stimu-Bus" image is from Haiti, not NYC. h/t Guggi]

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Posted in Barack Obama, Bigotry, Communism, Elections 2012, Free Speech, government, History, Open thread, Politics, Progressives, SCOTUS, Socialism | 117 Comments »

Jacksonianism Rediscovered.

by coldwarrior ( 112 Comments › )
Filed under Academia, History, Military, Open thread, Politics, Progressives, Tea Parties at September 24th, 2010 - 11:30 am

Recently, more than a few blogs and news outlets have been writing about the Tea Party and this new found Jacksonian idea about foreign policy and how it will shape American foreign policy in the the coming years. I would argue that this new found Jacksonianism isn’t a new phenomenon at all.  Jacksonianism has never left the average American, it was always in the hearts of those of us here in fly-over country. You know us, we are the people who send our sons to fight in the wars and disdain sending out troops to war over a theory in a book from an academician, no matter how ‘smart’ the writer is.  It took the Tea Parties to become a cohesive force in politics and a voice for the average American for ‘Jacksonianism’ to be rediscovered of the press and the so called chattering class of ‘elites’. The ‘elites’ never had to pay much attention to the average Americans, the average Americans were too busy producing, building America, and paying taxes for Progressive programs to have the time to get a real cohesive, and powerful trans-party political voice until the anger at the Progressives became so unifying that the Tea Parties were formed out of frustration and hope.

The ‘elitist’ progressives on both the right and left parted with the traditional Jacksonian foreign policy many years ago and replaced it with Wilsonianism while a silent majority of Americans retained the ideas of Jacksonian foreign policy and war-fighting.  The Progressive minds who embrace Wilsonianism are also just like the Tea Parties in the fact that they are both trans-political voices.  There are Independent, Democrat and Republican members of both the Progressive Ideology and the the Tea Parties.  The Tea Partiers think in quantitative benefits for America and her allies as the defining factor of foreign policy while the Progressives  and their fellow travelers believe in foreign policy that is driven by ideas and theories that might lead to representative governments run by an elected elite who, in theory,  are then the key to global stability. Its easy to be a Wilsonian Progressive when it isn’t your son going to fight a war over a theory in a book from an academician.

So what is this newly rediscovered Jacksonianism that the Progressives and the ‘elites’ are so worried about?  Jacksonian foreign policy and its approach to war is very Realist and very easily measured. International institutions (like the UN) are viewed with suspicion at best, with contempt as an enemy at worst. These  should be used only when very necessary and used sparingly. There needs to be a clear national security and national interest driven reason to use force, and this application of force must be utterly overwhelming. America is viewed as sovereign, exceptional, and, as Reagan said, ‘the last refuge of man-kind’.  Therefore American exceptionalism and ideals are worth going to war over as long as that war strengthens the American position in the world stage. Jacksonians take American God given constitutional rights over the Wilsonian idea of government granted (and thereby government removed) human rights.

The idea of ‘spreading democracy’ in the Islamic World as a response to 9/11 and intractable jihad-driven Islam is anathema to the Jacksonian.  A Jacksonian would have taken decisive and overwhelming action after the first WTC bombing and the USS Cole bombing, perhaps preventing 9/11.  The classic Jacksonian action was the American occupation of Europe after WW2, which ended the near perpetual state of war in Europe for the prior ten centuries.  The Jacksonians occupied and forced peace on Europe after WW2, the Wilsonian Progressives tried and fail to create peace with diplomats in Europe after WW1.

The Wilsonian Progressive belief system is founded on the thoughts of Woodrow Wilson, the professor and President.  Wilson, like his adherents are driven by a belief and confidence in self that borders on outright arrogance. They see themselves as the enlightened leaders of the great unwashed masses. The Wilsonian Progressive foreign policy is driven by Immanuel Kant’s 1795 essay ‘Perpetual Peace’, Kant states that democracies are less likely to go to war than dictatorships and monarchies because the people in the democracy are participants in the government process, not just subjects. This is the underpinning of Wilsonian Progressive foreign policy: the belief that democracy can be laid over or forced upon any society.  If democracy could be forced on all states, then a stable world can be governed by the enlightened.  It is irrelevant to a Wilsonian Progressive if democracy is not possible in a given society. Wilsonian Progressiveism is purely ideologically driven, where Jacksonianism is driven by Realism. The Wilsonian Progressiveist will go to war over an idea or a theory in the belief that he alone is correct and his idealism about exporting American Democracy world wide will convince the enemy of America to become our friends. Or, they will go to war as Bill Clinton did in Kosovo over ‘human rights’ violations.

The Wilsonian Progressives response to Islamic terrorism before 9/11 was to do more or less nothing.  Allow the international structures to aid the US in a ‘law enforcement’ problem  to stop the terrorists.  Since they beleive that all people see the world the same way they do, they assumed this would be enough to stop terrorists, because the terrorists should have a fear of law enforcement. As we know, they do not. After 9/11 the Progressives that run American foreign policy invaded Afghanistan (a good move even for the Jacksonians) and then the mission creep occurred and the American policy in Afghanistan was to create a democracy, where democracy will not work. The Jacksonian approach would have been overwhelming and decisive force in many more places than Afghanistan, perhaps work with Sadam Hussein, then occupy areas as needed or go home after complete destruction of the sponsoring states.

Jacksonians go to war over national security issues while Wilsonian Progressives will eschew national interests and go to war over ideals and theories. Both beleive in the American model, which is why Obama is not a Wilsonian Progressive, he is a Third World Liberation theologist. Jacksonains and Wilsonian Progressives do diverge on the means to protect America both at home and abroad. It is most ironic that the Jacksonians have been ‘rediscovered’ as a threat by the ‘elites’, Jacksonianism never went away outside of the beltway, the fly-overs have always been Jacksonians.  It was the Progressive governmental policies from both the GOP and the Democrats that woke the average American, many of whom are Jacksonian at heart, and forced the formation of the Tea Parties who will help shape foreign policy in the next few years. Old Hickory would be proud

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Posted in Academia, History, Military, Open thread, Politics, Progressives, Tea Parties | 112 Comments »

Barack Obama and Socialism

by Speranza ( 104 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Progressives, Socialism at April 28th, 2010 - 9:00 am

What kind of a socialist is Barack Obama – the worst kind of socialist in my opinion. A socialist who actually believes  the bull spit that he learned in school. A socialist who believes that creation of wealth should be part of the seven deadly sins. In another era (say the 1940′s) Obama would be what was later derisively referred to as a “fellow traveler”.

by Jonah Goldberg

The assertion that Barack Obama is a socialist became a hallmark of the 2008 presidential campaign. His opponent, John McCain, used Obama’s own extemporaneous words to an Ohio plumber as Exhibit A: “When you spread the wealth around,” Obama had said, “it’s good for everybody.” That, McCain insisted, sounded “a lot like socialism,” as did Obama’s proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy and high earners for the explicit purpose of taking better care of the lower and middle classes with that redistributed money.

Republicans believed they had hit a rhetorical mother lode with this line of argument in 2008, but their efforts to make hay of Obama’s putative socialism proved unedifying, if not outright comic. The National Committee of the Republican Party even formally considered a resolution on whether the Democratic party should change its name to “the Democratic Socialist Party” of the United States. The stunt was shelved infavor of compromise language lamenting the Democrats’ “march toward socialism.”

Fourteen months into his presidency, in March 2010, Obama succeeded in muscling through Congress a partial government takeover of the national health-care system. That legislative accomplishment followed Obama’s decision a year earlier, without congressional approval, to nationalize two of the country’s Big Three automobile companies. In the intervening months, he had also imposed specific wage ceilings on employees at banks that had taken federal bailout money—the first such federal wage controls since an ill-fated experiment by Richard Nixon in 1971. Obama also made the federal government the direct provider of student loans, and did so by putting that significant change in American policy inside the larger health-care bill. In a September 2009 press conference, Obama suggested that a publicly funded health-care system might help “avoid some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits and excessive administrative costs”—thus mistaking the act of making money, the foundational cornerstone of capitalism itself, with the generation of unnecessary expenses.

Given his conduct and rhetoric as president, we have every reason to reopen the question from 2008 and ask, quite simply, What kind of socialist is Barack Obama?

[...]

Read the rest here: What kind of Socialist is Barack Obama?

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Posted in Barack Obama, Progressives, Socialism | 104 Comments »

If You Ask Who Wrote Dreams of My Father, You’re a ______?

by snork ( 103 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Media, Political Correctness, Politics at April 14th, 2010 - 4:30 pm

I guess there’s more than one race-obsessed nutcase in the universe. Ron Radosh, says this at PJM:

In the current issue of National Review, Jay Nordlinger has a noteworthy article about critics who charged him with being a racist after he wrote that he thought President Obama appeared to be arrogant in his State of the Union address. The word arrogant, he quickly found out, was now held to be “a racist codeword.”

Strangely, when liberals make comments about Obama that actually could be construed as racist code words, no one utters a peep and those guilty of offense are quickly let off the hook. Take Dan Rather, for example. As Nordlinger points out, Rather “described Obama as ‘very articulate’ — there they go again — but said ‘he couldn’t sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.’ Watermelons? Rather later said, ‘Anyone who knows me personally or knows my professional career would know that race was not on my mind.’ I’m sure that’s true. But would he give such a break to a conservative who committed a similar faux pas?”

Well, you really didn’t expect fairness did you? Not to be outdone, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker goes full Queeg:

Remnick, as I pointed out in my last blog post, goes on the attack against Obama’s critics during the campaign. His most extensive and nasty comments are reserved for Jack Cashill, the blogger who penned the now famous articleraising questions about whether Obama wrote his memoir Dreams from My Father, or if it might have been ghostwritten by Bill Ayers.

Cashill has solid bona fide academic credentials. He has a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue University, and author of a respected book on American intellectuals, Hoodwinked. He also acknowledged from the start that “shy of a confession by those involved, I will not be able to prove conclusively that Obama did not write this book.” What he offered is an argument that readers were free to accept, reject or challenge.  It is certainly valid to do the latter.  I suspect he certainly expected that. At any rate, except for Rush Limbaugh and others on the political right, Cashill convinced very few that he was on to anything.

Thou shalt not question the Lord Obama, sayeth Saint Remneck.

Since so many people had a sense of Obama from his own writings, Remnick argues, any challenge to his authorship “possessed a diabolical potency for those who wished him ill.” (This is certainly so. Friends of mine told me that they supported him from the get go because they had read Dreams From my Father.) Remnick writes: “It suggested that the man poised to become the first African-American President, one celebrated for his language and his eloquence, could not possibly be such a good writer.”

Yeah, that’s exactly what he’s suggesting.

Remnick does nothing to take on Cashill’s actual arguments. Saying he is part of a “lunatic orbit” is not exactly any kind of a real answer. But he does more — and this time, Remnick uses the same attack launched on Nordlinger. He calls  Cashill’s argument racist! First, he calls the claim that Obama had a ghost writer a “libel” that has a particularly “ugly pedigree.” It is this:

Writing elevated a slave from non-being, from commodity, to human status. … In Frederick Douglass’ narrative, his master, Mr.Auld says, “Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world … if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) to read, there would be no keeping him.”
And yet writers like Douglass had to call on white men to authenticate their texts, the better to disprove the antebellum Jack Cashills and Rush Limbaugh ready to declare fraud.

So questioning the authenticity of this book is the same thing as questioning the authenticity of Douglass’ book. IOW, to question the authorship of the book is…RACIST!!!

It’s a very short step from there (we’re already well over the shark) to saying that any due diligence whatsoever is RACIST!!!

Radosh continues:

Remnick, instead of showing how, why and where the questions raised by Cashill have no merit, simply asserts that like in the times of slavery, white critics today argue that Obama might not have written his book and needed a ghost writer to help him because they too are racist and believe that Obama or any other articulate, smart and educated African-American cannot write his own book!

Cashill’s arguments may indeed be wrong and not have merit. I emphasize this because I am not writing to endorse his theory. I am only arguing that Remnick does not even try to disprove or challenge him. Instead, he deals with him and Limbaugh by playing the race card in an absurd way.

That’s about the size of it.

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Posted in Barack Obama, Media, Political Correctness, Politics | 103 Comments »

Totalitarian Progressives promote Serf Style Dependency

by Rodan ( 123 Comments › )
Filed under Economy, Liberal Fascism at August 12th, 2009 - 10:00 am

Feudalism, which was thought to be long gone has made a comeback. The Transnational Totalitarian Progressive Movement is promoting Neo-Feudalism, a system where Progressive elites will have the rest of us living a serf style dependency. An example of their attitude is a program giving out $200 per child to poor families in NY for School supplies. This program was funded with $140 million from the taxpayers and the other $35 million coming from George Soros.

A $200 back-to-school giveaway for needy kids sparked a mad rush for money on the streets of New York on Tuesday.

“It’s free money!” said Alecia Rumph, 26, who waited in a Morris Park, Bronx, line 300 people deep for the cash to buy uniforms and book bags for her two kids.

“Thank God for Obama. He’s looking out for us.”

Thousands of people lined up at banks and check-cashing shops to withdraw the cash that magically appeared on their electronic benefit cards.

Read the rest.

Although this sounds nice, why do these people deserve $200 per child? Why not other families in other locations? The attitude displayed by these people shows how many Americans are already Serfs to the Progressive Lords. Also, why is Georg Soros involved in this? That was a stupid question. Soros is one of the Transnational masters of the Progressives.

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Posted in Economy, Liberal Fascism | 123 Comments »

Another Anti American Article

by Rodan ( 11 Comments › )
Filed under Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Liberal Fascism, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness at April 30th, 2009 - 7:15 am

This clown Andrew  Bacevich does some historical revisions. He gives the Soviets credit for WWII and ending the cold war. He then goes on to blame America for ever evil in the world.

Farewell to the American Century

Thank you, comrades

So goes the preferred narrative of the American Century, as recounted by its celebrants.

The problems with this account are twofold. First, it claims for the United States excessive credit. Second, it excludes, ignores or trivializes matters at odds with the triumphal story line.

The net effect is to perpetuate an array of illusions that, whatever their value in prior decades, have long since outlived their usefulness. In short, the persistence of this self-congratulatory account deprives Americans of self-awareness, hindering our efforts to navigate the treacherous waters in which the country finds itself at present. Bluntly, we are perpetuating a mythic version of the past that never even approximated reality and today has become downright malignant. Although Richard Cohen may be right in declaring the American Century over, the American people — and especially the American political class — still remain in its thrall.

This is the Leftist mindset. They see America as evil and to blame for everything. This explains the Leftist-Islamic alliance. They view Islam as a liberation movement. With Americans like this, who needs enemies.

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Posted in Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Liberal Fascism, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness | 11 Comments »

Charles Johnson attacks FOX in support of Pro-Jihadi/Leftist GE

by Rodan ( 129 Comments › )
Filed under Dhimmitude, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, LGF, Media at April 23rd, 2009 - 12:51 pm

Charles has once again attacked FOX news. Now he is mad that Jesse Waters who is a GE shareholder. He has a right to ask questions about MSNBC. But the LGF Cult leader doesn’t like this so he attacks.

Fox’s O’Reilly Producer Ambushes GE Shareholder Meeting

MSNBC’s extreme leftward bias is obvious to any honest observer; Keith Olbermann is the poster boy for it, and was the winner of our 2007 Fiskie award.

But with this little stunt, Fox News crossed a whole lot of journalistic lines into behavior that borders on unethical: Drama at GE shareholders meeting.

The hostility between Fox News Channel and MSNBC reached a fever pitch Wednesday when a Fox producer infiltrated the GE shareholders meeting.

Just before GE re-elected board members, company brass were hit with questions from shareholders critical of an alleged leftward political slant at MSNBC.

But one of those questions came from Jesse Waters, a producer on “The O’Reilly Factor” whose criticisms were cut short when his microphone was cut off, according to several attendees. Waters apparently did not publicly identify himself as a Fox employee.

Waters has built a reputation as an ambush interviewer, specializing in on-the-street confrontations. But this is arguably the boldest move by a Fox newsie to utilize the tactic inside their chief rival’s tent, as it were.

Many LGFers support what FOX did, at least initially so Charles responds what the cult should think.

This is sleazy journalism at its worst. Sorry, whether Waters is a shareholder or not, I can’t co-sign on this one.

13 Charles  4/23/09 9:45:29 am

This is sleazy journalism at its worst. Sorry, whether Waters is a shareholder or not, I can’t co-sign on this one.

Charles must approve of things in order to be legit. His Fascism is showing here.

68 Charles  4/23/09 9:56:45 am reply quote

I guarantee that if an MSNBC employee had pulled this kind of stunt at a Fox shareholders’ meeting, nobody on the right would be making excuses for them. Crappy behavior is crappy behavior, and this was simply wrong.

Charles doesn’t like this because he’s scared someone will do this to his cowardly self.

103 Charles  4/23/09 10:04:22 am

re: #94lawhawk

At the point I wrote that, I hadn’t seen evidence he was a legitimate shareholder. Now, there is evidence, in which case he did have every right to ask them.

Fact is that GE has been allowing NBC to run hard left at every opportunity and shareholders have not demanded an accounting. Maybe they don’t mind going for a niche market, but when you’ve got a brand that NBC does, you’d expect it to be more than a niche market.

He may have had a right to ask the questions, but it was simply improper not to identify himself as an employee of a competitor.

Charles is just thing of excuses to bash FOX and defend his Leftists and Islamist friends. I salute lawhak for pointing out Waters did nothing wrong. I read the thread and most of the LGFers support what Waters did. Charles will get his enforcers of Sharmuta, Kilgore Trout and the Albanian Islamists Medaura to enforce the antiFOX attitude of the Lizard King. There will soon be more bannings.

Charles Johnson is clearly in the Leftists camp. He defends GE which supports the Iranian regime and is a propaganda outlet for the Leftist-Islamic Alliance. Wake up Lizards, Charles is a false prophet!

Update: Charles is being hammered be most of the Lizards. His patience is runny very thin. As a Cult Leader one must not dare question him. He already lashes out at a poster!

222 Charles  4/23/09 10:45:28 am reply quote

re: #214 kay1212

The SEC doesn’t have any regulation about private shareholders announcing who they work for when they speak at shareholder meetings or any regulations about who can purchase stock in any publicly held company if they work for any competitor.

There are regulations against foreign ownership and there are regulations requiring disclosure when someone owns more than x% of a company.

There IS an SEC regulation called Reg. FD that stipulates that no information can be given to one group of shareholders or investors or analysts that is not made public to ALL. The FD stands for Fair Disclosure. So nothing secretive can ever be announced in shareholder meetings. The reason they are closed is so that management doesn’t have to answer tough questions.

Excuse me if I tend to doubt what you’re saying about this — you claimed a few days ago that you heard that completely bogus Navy SEAL Somalia rumor directly from a first-hand source. Why should I trust what you say about SEC regulations (without any links to sources) when you’ve shown that you’ll make up stories?

230 Charles4/23/2009 10:53:33 am PDT

re: #225 Orangutan

I ask you to prove your assertion that the SEC has a law regulating such questions at a shareholder meeting.

Why are you putting words in my mouth? I did not make any such assertion. I said I don’t know if the SEC has a regulation like that, and I said it very clearly.

240 Charles  4/23/09 11:03:11 am reply quote

re: #237 LGoPs

No, I respectfully disagree. It is more a matter of engaging in the fight and a fight is what this is. A fight for providing the information that the American people need to make their decisions and judgments.

Bill O’Reilly is promoting Bill O’Reilly with stunts like this. What kind of “information” did anyone get out of it? None.

You’re being played.

Clearly Charles is having a meltdown. How dare his opinions be questioned, this is unethical! Charles you are exposing yourself!

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Posted in Dhimmitude, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, LGF, Media | 129 Comments »