The Left Never Questions A Kennedy

"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." - Ronald Reagan, September 25, 1987 -- remarks in Arlington, Virginia

Oh those Kennedys.  Our republic is in a sad state of affairs when so-called Conservatives invoke any Kennedy on a regular basis, including JFK, for almost anything good.  Examples are numerous, worthy of a long book, but I will stick to just a few.  The first example is of a Senator Edward Kennedy absurdity is near the end of a tediously long speech, given in New York city on 12 AUG 1980 with respect to a progressive income tax:

The vast majority of Americans cannot afford this panacea from a Republican nominee who has denounced the progressive income tax as the invention of Karl Marx. I am afraid he has confused Karl Marx with Theodore Roosevelt--that obscure Republican president who sought and fought for a tax system based on ability to pay. Theodore Roosevelt was not Karl Marx, and the Republican tax scheme is not tax reform.

First, he scolds Ronald Reagan (the Republican nominee) for missing a possible Adam Smith answer from 1776, which really does not address progressive income taxation at all, but revenue taxation:

The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

Progressive taxation was first recorded on paper during the French Revolution in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789:

A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means.^[16]

However, The Gipper was substantially correct, in the works of Marx and Engles, The Communist Manifesto of 1848, progressive taxation comes up right after abolishing private ownership of land:

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 

In Senator Kennedy's zeal to misdirect his audience from Marx and to try to make candidate Reagan look foolish, he directed everybody to . . . Theodore Roosevelt.  Trust Buster and Progressive "Bull Moose" Party founder Teddy Roosevelt.  Yes, he was a Republican for a little while, but they were just not progressive enough for him.  He was at war with anybody who was too successful, just like his cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt was when he began his National Socialist reign.  Senator Kennedy's remarks become even more comical when you read his brother John F. Kennedy's remarks in Madison Square Garden almost 20 years earlier, on 21 OCT 1960:

This issue which divides Mr. Nixon and myself, which divides the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, has divided us through many years of our history. It divided the country in l932, and the American people choose progress. It divided the country in 1912, and the American people chose the New Freedom and Woodrow Wilson.

(Emphasis mine)

The 1932 reference is to FDR, who prolonged a depression into the Great Depression.  New Freedom must be newspeak for the totalitarian regime that Wilson enacted in America.  Since JFK's speech was given to an audience of the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, newspeak is a safe bet.

Full disclosure, I got the idea from this William F. Buckley, Jr. lecture.

Update:  Tracking down the Reagan quote in the Ted Kennedy speech proved difficult. For one thing, I made the stupid assumption that Kennedy's speech writer was referencing something from in or around the 1980 campaign.  Not even close.  I found an old James J. Kilpatrick article that reveals Kennedy was attacking Reagan for a then sixteen year old statement.
It would be great to find the 1964 version of the Reagan speech that Kilpatrick wrote about, but even with our advanced research tools the closest references I could find are these and no transcript or video -

1961: Dec. 11 "The Danger of Losing Our Freedom by Installments," Annwl Dinner of the Huntington Memorial Hospital's Medical Staff, Huntington Sheraton Hotel, Pasadena, Calif.

1962: Feb. 21 "Losing Freedom By Installments," Uvalde Chamber of Commerce Banquet, Southwest Texas Junior College, Uvalde, Texas. 

Kilpatrick also notes some of what I noticed in his critique of the Kennedy speech.

Socialists/Leftists Are The Most Bigoted People Anywhere

Before you start rattling off a list that begins with Ku Klux Klan (KKK), you might want to look at their origins and then thank me for the link, agree that they were Leftist, Statist, bigoted busybodies who wanted to restrict individual liberty through legislation and terror.

Now, for the freshest Leftist bigotry in America, we need only look at the MSNBC video of one young Mr. Touré exposing his own bigotry toward race-mixing (video and story at the link, video also embed below).  As quoted by RCP:

Martin Bashir, host: "Toure, you were just nodding your head agreeing with Karen? What, on the ethnicity of the accuser?"

Toure: "Yes, absolutely. Charles Blow was talking about this the other day. What sort of comb, he says, does these women use? We're going to see how open the GOP is to this black -- their 'new black friend' when they find out he is harassing blonde women as opposed to black women. That sort of thing of black sexuality -- predatory black sexuality. Very frightening in this country, still. Very threatening. So we'll see how that plays out. "

The Charles Blow comment in question is eluding me for some reason after searching  Google, You Tube, and other search facilities.

Apparently Mr. Touré does not get out much.  If he did, he would see every variety of racial mixing in American society without a bit of Conservative harassment to be found.  That is, unless you categorize the New Black Panther Party and King Samir Shabazz as some, as yet unknown, flavor of Conservative:

Sadly, the video above is now missing the clip embeded below and the good King Shabazz does not appear when searched on their site.  He shouts from a bull horn that he wants to kill all white people and screams at Black men "sliding through South street with filthy White cracker whores".  National Geographic terms this as King Shabazz preaching separatism "only to his people."


Point being, nothing has changed with the Progressives/Socialists/Leftists of the 1860s.

No Socialist Watches His Own Video Clips

It is impossible to surf the Leftist dominated 'net without finding some hilarious post from a Leftist/Communist/Socialist.  One can avoid porn easier than one can avoid clueless Leftists who do not even read or watch what they comment on.  This exhibit is much more blatant than my observations about Leftists and PBS.

Behold the caption by dwendt66 for the following video of Jerry Rubin hawking a book:
A McCarthyite suggests to Jerry Rubin on a 1970 Donahue episode if his new book "Do It" advocates a Communist take over of the USA.
Now, here is the video:

That 'McCarthyite' was quoting from Jerry Rubin's book, DO iT! and at 0:44 Rubin responded: "I call it a Communist takeover of all private property."  Rubin continues on about his advocacy for Communism and expresses his belief that the peoples of Latin America, Asia and Africa have the right to "take over American land."

For those who do not know how Jerry Rubin met his demise, he died jaywalking on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.  The glowing New York Times "week in review" story glosses over the circumstances that the Seattle Times revealed three paragraph-sentences into their story on 29 NOV 1994:

Rubin had been at the University of California-Los Angeles Medical Center since Nov. 14 (1994), when he was hit by a car while jaywalking across Wilshire Boulevard near his Brentwood home.

Note that the Brentwood area of  Los Angeles was and still is a pretty expensive neighborhood.  The Wikipedia entry reveals: It was a weekday evening and traffic was heavy, with three lanes in each direction. A car swerved to miss Rubin but a second car, immediately behind the first, was unable to avoid him.

The reader can digest all that themselves without further comment from me.

Christopher Hitchens On The Hypocrisy Of The Left And More Buckley

A few choice video clips.
Christopher Hitchens on the hypocrisy of the Left with respect to the Iraq war:

William F. Buckley and Christopher Hitchens discuss the counter culture and the counter counter culture Hitchens & Buckley: The New Left Out (3/5):

Hitchens & Buckley: Joint Agreement (4/5)

Hitchens tackles a typical West hating Marxist

Firing Line: A Distinction Between Left And Liberal By Malcolm Muggeridge, Plus Other Buckley Videos

William F. Buckley, Jr. talks with Malcolm Muggeridge about the distinction between Left and Liberal. Bonus, how Mrs. Roosevelt did more damage than Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler, i.e, how Liberalism is bad. Strikes me as similar to how Libertarians view things.

Here (sorry, no embed), Buckley talks about Getting it Right just after its release in 2003.  His introduction to the book is great, covering "the conservative scene" of the 1950s.  During question time, an audience member from AP informs him that Daniel Patrick Moynihan has died and asks Buckley for a few words.

Added bonus. William F. Buckley objects to being called a "crypto-Nazi" by Gore Vidal and threatens to hit him so hard that he will "stay plastered." Over the years Buckley's phrasing has been twisted into "stay stoned."

Gore Vidal: As far as I'm concerned, the only sort of pro-crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself.

William F. Buckley: Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll sock you in your god damn face and you'll stay plastered.

Only included because I have been looking for this clip for years and finally found it.

Still looking for a speech Buckley gave about how "the Left has won" in our society.

Coming soon to a gun show near you!

What Does Wikipedia Have Against Freedom?

Wikipedia: Propagandist for Stalinism

As anybody who has read this blog or other serious posts of mine elsewhere, I use Wikipedia.Com frequently to find sources of information.  I caution anybody about using Wikipedia pages as sources themselves.  Serious researchers know this, but many regular folks do not, so I thought I would throw that out there.

It is hard to pinpoint the source of my ire, since I've been getting ired at Wikipedia entries for years.  I'll start with a little compare and contrast.  First, the fluffy, pretty definition of the most lethal system of government and belief system ever, Communism:

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured uponcommon ownership of the means of production. This movement, in its Marxist-Leninistinterpretations, significantly influenced the history of the 20th century, which saw intense rivalry between the "socialist world" (socialist states ruled by Communist parties) and the "western world" (countries with market economies and Liberal democratic government), culminating in the Cold War between the Eastern bloc and the "Free World".

Now, see how they treat the mean, nasty, equally vile, but less lethal system of government and belief, National Socialism.  If you bothered to click through, the link redirects to Nazism, already tipping the hand of the Wikipedia crowd.  Nazism is merely a subset of National Socialism, which is yet another subset of Socialism.  On to the continuation of Stalin's propaganda against anything not Stalinist:

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism (German:Nationalsozialismus) was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany.[1][2][3][4] It is a unique variety of fascism that incorporates biological racismand antisemitism.[5]

Nazism was founded out of elements of the far-right racist völkisch German nationalistmovement and the violent anti-communist Freikorps paramilitary culture that fought against the uprisings of communist revolutionaries in post-World War I Germany.[6] The ideology was developed first by Anton Drexler and then Adolf Hitler as a means to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism.[7] Initially Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, though such aspects were later downplayed in the 1930s to gain the support from industrial owners for the Nazis, focus was shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes.[8]

Plenty of truth there, mixed in with the big lie that National Socialism is nothing but Nazism.  Further in the article they mix Nazis with Fascists, as if they were alike at all.  They continue the fiction that business seized and nationalized by the German government were some sort of benefit to the business owners to get their support.  The disambiguation page is no help whatsoever.

Several years ago, someone told me that the Wikipedia difference between National Socialism and International Socialism was the "totalitarian purpose" of National Socialism.  I cannot prove that the notion was ever stated in the pages of Wikipedia, but it does fit.  Also, it is a missusage of the Mussolini usage, that totalitarian was a "we are all in this together" or "we are all stronger together" proposition identical to his Red/International Socialist buddies in the Communist ranks.

The latest annoyance is the Wikipedia entry for The World League for Freedom and Democracy:

The World League for Freedom and Democracy (WLFD, formerly the World Anti-Communist League, WACL) is an international anti-communist political organization founded in 1966 in Taipei, Republic of China (Taiwan), under the initiative of Chiang Kai-shek. It was founded with the aim of opposing Communism around the world through "unconventional" methods. It had eight regional branches, with a presence in up to 100 countries on six continents. The honorary life chairman of the WACL was Dr. Ku Cheng-Kang, a senior leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), and the president of Taiwan's National Assembly.

The U.S. chapter of WACL, the United States Council for World Freedom (USCWF), has been one of the most active branches. USCWF was founded in 1981 by Major General John K. Singlaub. This branch has generated controversy, as it prominently supported Nicaraguan guerrillas in the Iran–Contra affair[1] and, in 1981, the USCWF was placed under watch by the Anti-Defamation League, which said that the organization had increasingly become "a point of contact for extremists, racists, and anti-Semites".[2][3] During the 1980s, the USCWF and WACL conducted a purge of these elements, and invited ADL observers to monitor its conferences;[4] by 1985, the Anti-Defamation League declared itself "satisfied that substantial progress has been made since 1981 in ridding the organization of racists and anti-Semites."[5]

Note the scare quotes around unconventional, and this gem: This branch has generated controversy, as it prominently supported Nicaraguan guerrillas in the Iran–Contra affair[1]  Those guerrillas played a lot nicer than any Communists that they were fighting.  The rest of the article is nothing but an accusation that all groups mentioned on the page are neo-Nazi groups, fitting right in line with Stalin's Third Period Declaration of 1928 and its evolution, i.e., that anything not Stalinist is Right-Wing Nazism.  Pretty rough treatment for a group of people who fled Mao instead of 'seeing the Marxist light.'

To the extent that this nonsense continues today is amazing.  It goes well beyond the "Chinamen" and Korean hate expressed by Socialist leaders of today, like Al Sharpton. (Actually, I have been digging around for this hard to find audio for months and just found it on The Blaze, so giving it a parking space here)

Socialist Al Sharpton

Why Do Socialists Hate Jews?

Judaism Without Embellishment

This topic has been a puzzle to me for a while.  The phenomena has its roots with marching orders from Moscow, relabeling and regurgitating The Protocols of the Elders of Zion for the modern Socialist.  The Leftist Socialists of the world perform incredible linguistic felonies when they try to explain away their antisemitism, especially when they think they are speaking only their fellow bigots and their words get played to the world:

Helen Thomas is not the only example of course, but her example is one that the media finally decided to examine, rather than just brush away.  Also, Ms. Thomas decided to take the long-winded approach to her semantic laden bigotry.

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, sums the issue up nicely with Helen Thomas as the object of his example:

Helen Thomas was fired for saying that the Jews of Israel should move to Europe, where their relatives had been slaughtered in the most devastating act of genocide in history. She believes that once the Jews are evacuated from their ancestral homeland, the world's only Jewish country should be replaced by what would be the world's 23rd Arab country. She believes that Palestinians deserve a country of their own, but that the Jews are undeserving of a nation-state in their homeland, which has had a continuous Jewish presence for 3,000 years, and has been the location of two previous Jewish states. This sounds like a very anti-Jewish position to me, not merely an anti-Zionist position.

In college and after, I heard the attempts to explain away this bigotry the same manner.  The people who thought Jews were "bad" and got called on it would say they were really anti-Zionist.  Leftist friends would explain away the statements of Mideastern students in that way.

David Hochman

In an interview with Playboy magazine by David Hochman, Thomas performed without a net and in a performance that eclipsed a famous Obama interview, she monkeyed around with her words but never wavered in her hate for Jews.  By-the-way, that Playboy interview is hard to find now.  I trust that this copy at Veterans Today is a correct and authorized copy.  Perhaps I am over quoting the article here, better than under quoting, but go to the article and see for yourself.

Helen Thomas

PLAYBOY: It was your follow-up comment, when you said the Jews should go back to Poland, Germany and America, that really infuriated people.

THOMAS: Well, that immediately evoked the concentration camps. What I meant was they should stay where they are because they’re not being persecuted—not since World War II, not since 1945. If they were, we sure would hear about it. Instead, they initiated the Jackson-Vanik law, which said the U.S. would not trade with Russia unless it allowed unlimited Jewish emigration. But it was not immigration to the United States, which would have been fine with me. It was to go to Palestine and uproot these people, throw them out of their homes, which they have done through several wars. That’s not fair. I want people to understand why the Palestinians are upset. They are incarcerated and living in an open prison. I say to the Israelis, “Get out of people’s homes!” It’s unacceptable to have soldiers knocking on a door at three in the morning and saying, “This is my home.” And forcing people out of homes they’ve lived in for centuries? What is this? How can anybody accept it? I mean, Jewish-only roads? Would anyone tolerate something like that in America? White-only roads?

PLAYBOY: You mean Israeli-only roads, not Jewish only, right? [Editor’s note: Israel closes certain roads to Palestinians, but roads are open to all Israeli citizens and to other nationals, regardless of religious background.]

THOMAS: Israeli-only roads, okay. But it’s more than semantics because the Palestinians are deprived of owning these roads. This is their land. I’m sorry, but we’re talking about foreigners who came and said, “God gave this land to us.” [Former Israeli prime minister ­Yitzhak] Rabin said, “Where’s the deed?” I mean, come on! Do you know that an Arab Palestinian trying to go home to see his mother has to go through 10 checkpoints and then is held there, while an American tourist can go through right like that? The Palestinian people have to carry their kids to hospitals and are not allowed to drive cars and so forth. What is this? No American Jew would tolerate that sort of treatment here against blacks or anyone else. Why do they allow it over there? And why do they send my American tax dollars to perpetuate it?

Even she says it is semantics, meaning that Jew and Zionist are interchangeable. This also goes to a bit of mass deception perpetuated by journalists, academics and other mouthpieces of Socialism.  The false notion that only Jews are Israeli citizens, the false notion that only Jews can vote in Israel.  In the mind of Thomas and others, saying that Israeli roads are for Jews only is not inaccurate, since they think that only Jews can be Israelis.  Even the typical #OWS protestor can agree with her.

Not sure if Thomas has the convoluted the view that Palestinians should be voting in Israel, but that would fit.  This is the common and bizarre notion that is rarely challenged in the press.  For decades after WWII the US, France and British occupied Germany but Germans were never allowed to vote in France, England, or the USA.  Did anybody ever question that?  Of course, nobody in the media ever questioned Warsaw Pact countries being 'denied' a vote in Moscow either.  Here in the US, the only non-State that gets electoral college representation is the District of Columbia.  But somehow, the Jew Israel bashers think that the people of Gaza should be voting in Israel.

Thomas had more to say about Jews in her interview, especially about Jeffrey Goldberg, who I quoted above.  Links to the blockquote added by me.

PLAYBOY: Do you have a personal antipathy toward Jews themselves?

THOMAS: No. I think they’re wonderful people. They had to have the most depth. They were leaders in civil rights. They’ve always had the heart for others but not for Arabs, for some reason. I’m not anti-Jewish; I’m anti-Zionist. I am anti Israel taking what doesn’t belong to it. If you have a home and you’re kicked out of that home, you don’t come and kick someone else out. Anti-Semite? The Israelis are not even Semites! They’re Europeans, and they’ve come from somewhere else. But even if they were Semites, they would still have no right to usurp other people’s land. There are some Israelis with a conscience and a big heart, but unfortunately they are too few.

PLAYBOY: In the wake of your anti-Israel comments, a blogger from The ­Atlantic argued there’s really no distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. He wrote, “Thomas was fired for saying that the Jews of Israel should move to Europe, where their relatives had been slaughtered in the most devastating act of genocide in history. She believes that once the Jews are evacuated from their ancestral homeland, the world’s only Jewish country should be replaced by what would be the world’s 23rd Arab country. She believes that Palestinians deserve a country of their own but that the Jews are undeserving of a nation-state in their homeland, which has had a continuous Jewish presence for 3,000 years.…”

THOMAS: [Interrupts] Did a Jew write this? [Editor’s note: The writer is Jeffrey Goldberg.]

PLAYBOY: “…and has been the location of two previous Jewish states. This sounds like a very anti-Jewish position to me, not merely an anti-Zionist position.”

THOMAS: This is a rotten piece. I mean it’s absolutely biased and totally—who are these people? Why do they think they’re so deserving? The slaughter of Jews stopped with World War II. I had two brothers and many relatives who fought in that war against Hitler. We believed in it. Every American family was in that fight. But they were liberated since then. And yet they carry on the victimization. American people do not know that the Israeli lobbyists have intimidated them into believing every Jew is a persecuted victim forever—while they are victimizing Palestinians.

Jeffrey Goldberg responded in a short and very classy way.

Is Thomas seems unaware that the persecution and slaughter of Jews began long before WWII and continued long after?  Ignoring this is certainly in line with denying the wrongs of Stalin while being faithful to her antisemitic roots.  Seeing it as no big deal fits right in too.

The Soviets did not start bashing Israel right away.  They were, in fact, the second country to recognize Israel as a nation, the USA was first. Israel began as a Socialist leaning state, that the Soviets and the French found very appealing.  The Soviets cut diplomatic relations in 1967, during another war that involved Israel's neighbors wanting to drive all the Jews into the sea.  Like a jilted lover calling his ex-girlfriend a lesbian, they ramped up the antisemitism, disguising it as anti-Zionism (Zionology).  Useful idiots in the West, like Helen Thomas, are more than willing to spread the hate long after their Soviet puppet masters have retired.

UPDATE:  A Twitter user provided this comical response to my tweet about this post -

@stormkrow stormkrow

@JohnTagliaferro Why would Jews hold Kol Nidre service at #OWS. The only anti-semite in your thread is #GlennBeck

Glenn Beck as antisemitic in a thread about Helen Thomas?  He also directed another tweet at me claiming Obama governs closer to Reagan than FDR and "facts tend to have a liberal bias."  See what I mean? I don't remember what Reagan nationalized (if anybody has info on that, please forward) but I just named what Obama did in that direction yesterday. Check for show times for stormkrow at the Funny Bone!

What Kind Of Socialist Is Obama?

Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg visited this topic in May, 2010:

In many respects, Barack Obama’s neo-socialism is neoconservatism’s mirror image. Openly committed to ending the Reagan era, Obama is a firm believer in the power of government to extend its scope and grasp far deeper into society. In much the same way that neoconservatives accepted a realistic and limited role for the government, Obama tolerates a limited and realistic role for the market: its wealth is necessary for the continuation and expansion of the welfare state and social justice. While neoconservatism erred on the side of trusting the nongovernmental sphere—mediating institutions like markets, civil society, and the family—neosocialism gives the benefit of the doubt to government. Whereas neoconservatism was inherently skeptical of the ability of social planners to repeal the law of unintended consequences, Obama’s ideal is to leave social policy in their hands and to bemoan the interference of the merely political.

Is Obama a Nazi or some other kind of Socialist?

“I would have loved nothing better than to simply come up with some very elegant, academically approved approach to health care, and didn’t have any kinds of legislative fingerprints on it, and just go ahead and have that passed,” he told CBS’s Katie Couric. “But that’s not how it works in our democracy. Unfortunately, what we end up having to do is to do a lot of negotiations with a lot of different people.”

Whereas Ronald Reagan saw the answers to our problems in the private sphere (“in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”), Obama seeks to expand confidence in, and reliance on, government wherever and whenever he can, albeit within the confines of a generally Center-Right nation and the “unfortunate” demands of democracy.

As with Webb’s Fabian socialism, one will never be able to say of Obama’s developing doctrine, “now socialism has arrived.” On the night the House of Representatives passed the health-care bill, Obama said, “This legislation will not fix everything that ails our health care system. But it moves us decisively in the right direction.” Then, speaking specifically of another vote to be taken in the Senate but also cleverly to those not yet satisfied with what had been achieved, he added, “Now, as momentous as this day is, it’s not the end of this journey.”

Under Obama’s neosocialism, that journey will be endless, and no matter how far down the road toward socialism we go, he will always be there to tell the increasingly beleaguered marchers that we have only taken a “critical first step.”

He discussed the topic with Will Cain too. "Jonah Goldberg tells Will Cain that Barack Obama is a socialist. But he is (obviously) not a Stalinst, not Pol Pot, not a Nazi, and not a Marxist. Jonah says socialism comes in many forms and Obama seems to be taking the US in the direction of Western European social democracy - a strain of socialism."

Goldberg takes the position that Obama is some flavor of Social Democrat-type Socialist or Corporatist.  Sort of like Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson and FDR, but certainly nothing like Mao or Stalin.

I am not so generous.  As soon as Obama and his fellow travelers got to DC and were sworn in, they immediately engaged in tactics indistinguishable from pre-World War Two National Socialists.  After testing the waters a little, he took the bold step of nationalizing two of the three major US auto makers without any congressional action asked for or given, and got away with it, down to the detail of firing the CEO of GM and installing his own puppet.

Obama: Il Duce of General Motors

He continued through 2008 and 2009 in a slow-motion version of Mussolini in n1920s Italy, taking executive power to places it had never been in the USA, again with little or no congressional expansion of executive power.  With the help of Congress, he nationalized the healthcare industry and was given sweeping executive powers to administer it, including the power to force citizens and businesses to purchase healthcare plans against their will.  In typical leftoid calculus, the fine for failing to purchase healthcare was set lower than the cost of currently available health insurance policies.

Remember, one thing that applies to Socialists is if they tried a bad idea before, they will keep trying new ways of getting away with it until they succeed.  These tactics are not new on the American scene, but they have been under the dust heap of history for a while.

• Progressive Party Teddy Roosevelt included National Health Care in his 1912 campaign, modeled after a German system.
• President FDR suggested, but the American Medical Association (AMA) successfully opposed it.
• Harry Truman dusted off National Health Care, wanting to force all Americans to purchase health insurance.  He was stopped by a Democrat House and Senate, as well as the AMA.
• In 1962, President John F. Kennedy proposed National Health Care and was blocked by a Democrat House and Senate.
• In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare and Medicaid act, passed by the Democrat super-majorities in both houses of Congress.
• In 1971 President Richard Nixon began a Socialist squabble with Senator Ted Kennedy over just how socialized American Health Care should be.  With Nixon proposing the FDR/Truman/Hitler National Socialist tactic of forcing businesses to provide the service under penalty of law.  Kennedy took the full-on Marxist, International Socialist approach, proposing that National Healthcare become a federal government function.  Neither became law.
• President Carter proposed national healthcare in 1976, but was ignored by both Democrat controlled houses of Congress.
• Between 1986 and 1988, under President Reagan, Medicare was expanded so much and surcharges of wealthy recipients raised so high that a portion was repealed by the 101st Congress (both houses Democrat controlled) in 1989.
• Bill Clinton, in 1993 dusted off a Nixonian National Health Care proposal, nicknamed "Hillarycare", which failed to get widespread support, nor legislative support in the Democrat controlled Congress.  He succeeded with his 1997 State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) proposal, with the help of a Republican Congress.
• In 2003, President Bush (43) pushed for and a got from a Republican Congress, the Medicare Modernization Act, which socialized and bureaucratized (but I repeat myself) prescription drug coverage for Medicare recipients.
• Jump to 2008, and President Barrack Hussein Obama, with the help of a Democrat Congress.

In my humble estimation, Obama employs National Socialist tactics in most of his efforts to nationalize/socialize American enterprise.  Also note that there was a distinct Left-shift to Socialism by the Democrat party in 1968, with incremental moves in that direction until in 2008 when they imposed National Socialism on the US healthcare and automobile industries.

Does Obama display International Socialist traits?  Not exactly.  Some people see any "internationalist" leanings of avowed Socialists as signs of Communist/International Socialist belief, and he does have some of those.  Not necessarily true.  The National Socialists of old did engage in technology transfer (see also), as well as ideology "transfer," to other countries.  They invaded countries they viewed as "backward" in the twisted belief that it was a benefit to them.  Kipling called it the "White Man's Burden" when the US invaded the Philippines.  Mussolini used the same justification for invading Ethiopia and Libya.  Now Obama is in Libya under the same pretense, only the wording has changed.

Socialists (International, Communist, Social, Democratic, International, etc.) are the false-altruistic busybodies who are doing everything "for you", but for some reason they keep getting rich and the people who slave under their regimes die in squalor.

Green Mountain Coffee: A Modern Lesson In Sucking Up

I've been waiting to write about Green Mountain Coffee (GMCR) for a while, but my insider wanted me to wait a while.  Just got the green flag, so Boogitie Boogitie Boogitie!

There has been some growing discontent with the stock market writers, investors, and others.  Seems a bit of it has spilled into court too.  This relates only slightly to all that.

Happy GMCR workers

My source was working in the Knoxville, TN plant and mentioned something that struck me as odd.  The company had one of those Town Hall type meetings where the whole shift was herded into one room and shown a video of what a bang-up job all the workers were doing and what a fantastic job management was doing.

What both I and my source found odd was how the overflowing warehouses were addressed.  Some corporate bigshot (source could not remember precisely) spoke of warehouse workers complaining that aisles were full of stock.  The explanation given was that they had a lot of sales, so the employees should expect that they have a lot of stock.  Source thought that was odd, I thought it was total BS.

A GMCR warehouse.

If you have loads of orders and are outstripping your production, then your warehouses should be going empty, not filling up.  That is unless you have a shortage of warehouse space to begin with, then the warehouse workers would be used to overfilled warehouses.

Some "Fair Trade" propaganda.

I will not give away too much detail, least source get in trouble, but another big item was the drop in overtime accompanied by letting-go of temps after the overflowing warehouse information was set wild.

Green Mountain tries to cultivate an aroma of environmentalism, community, and being the "really nice" coffee company.  Of course, the people who fall for this crap are willing to pay $100 - $180 for a coffee maker that only makes one cup at a time vs. a $20 coffee press that can do the same thing better.  Plus, the Green Mountain K-Cup packaged coffee costs a lot more than regular coffee.

GMCR's K-Cup

Another item I just discovered, GMCR's K-Cup (proprietary single-serve coffee containers) patent is set to expire in September, 2012.  From my amateur observation, those cups and filters can be replicated quite easily.  My source says the packaging machines have gone through several evolutions in the Knoxville plant.

My analysis is nothing new, Green Mountain was the early adopter and endured the high cost curve that early adopters usually take.  Remember your friend who bought the $800 home CD player in the early 1980s?  Same effect.  Soon competitors can move in, buy better equipment, man a plant with experienced former GMCR temps and clean up.

Clean up if this fad of single-serve plastic coffee packs continues, which seems improbable.  The "green" of Green Mountain has the markings of an illusion, a fad, for people to have the 'cool looking' coffee maker in the kitchen next to the recycle bin for all of the little plastic and aluminum cups.  The same folks with the Leaf in the driveway and neon light-bulbs throughout the house.

You know who else was big on greenness, don't you?

Examinees

What does this have to do with Socialism?  Another thin link, probably nothing to be alarmed about.  The new mayor of Knoxville crowed during her campaign that Green Mountain located in Knoxville, TN partly because the unemployment center gave the Career Readiness Certification Exam, from the American College Test folks.  Every new machine operator and quality control tech. (the mayor said 300 to open the plant) needed that certification and there was a government office in Knoxville handing out the paper.  Why couldn't Green Mountain have ACT show up and give the tests to their candidates?  The typical rent-seeker answer is, 'why should we do it when the government can do it for us.'

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is shaping up to be the Solyndra of the brewed beverage industry, with a cheaper bill to the tax payers.

Trippin' Down Memory Lane

That post from this AM got me thinking about some of the more absurd things Leftists friends and acquaintances have told me over the years.  Hopefully, it will be as entertaining to you as it is to me.  This is probably my all-time favorite.  I will only bore you with the one, for now.

Evil Capitalist

A Masters Education Student (or whatever you call those people), C. would go off in fits of exasperation at me that "business wants to pay the lowest wages possible."  This was in the late 1980s.  BTW, he was an Industrial Education major.

My usual response was, "Yes, don't you want to pay the lowest price possible for the things you buy?"

"But these are people!" he would exclaim.

"Yes, these are people selling labor.  What is your point?" I would reply.

Teacher's Union Thugs

"But they are people not cattle!" He would add emphasis in proportion to the length of the conversation and the amount of beer we consumed and a near-campus drinkery.

"Yes, C. they are people.  Nobody is proposing they sell themselves to be sawn up, their fat rendered into soap and their ribs sold to upscale eateries.  At least nobody outside of Red China or North Korea.  They are people who can do things and other people need to purchase those skills.  Now, why should I purchase those skills for a price that is higher than the price an equally skilled person is willing to provide?"

"But, but, it costs a certain amount of money to live around here."

"It sure does!  Now, why should I have to put my family in hardship to pay someone $20/hr. to work in the widget factory when there are a dozen more who will do the same work, at an acceptable quality level, for $2/hr?"

"But you can't live on $2/hr. around here!"

"No kidding, so if my factory is only making me $20/day with $20/hr. labor, I need to reduce a cost.  So maybe I need to automate."

"Nobody suggested $20/hr . . ."

The erotic allure of automation.

"Then fill in whatever damn number for the hourly labor rate, the whole rate, not just the number that shows up on the employee's pay stub.  The point is, I am not going to pay more for labor than I need to.  If you and your little commie buddies want to jack up wages, then I need to automate and may well need to relocate."

"Wow, it sounds like there is some actual thinking going on in that head of yours, JT.  This deserves further study."

"I thought this was your field of study and where the hell do you get off calling me a Nazi whenever we start talking about this?  There is not a Socialist bone in my body!"  I could get a little animated too, when we got into the second pitcher of beer.

I never got into that look.

"I didn't call you a Nazi."

"Today."

"Yet.  And why do you call them Socialists?"

"It is in their name and they did the same shit as the Communists."

"The Communists didn't have concentration camps."

"So you want to talk about FDR now?"

Gulags were different than concentration camps?

"Noooo, I mean real concentration camps, where they sent the Jews."

"What do you think the Gulags were?"

"Well, the Communists used unions."

"No, the Nazis reorganized unions, the Communists eliminated them.  One of the first things Castro did was completely eliminate trade unions."

"I need to look into that."

"Along with everything else besides welding, apparently."

Of course, I was wrong about a few things too, back then.  Like who created National Socialism, or wrongly thinking that Mussolini was as equally guilty as Hitler for the Holocaust.

"Captive Factory Girls 2: The Revolt"

On the other hand, it was a great time to discuss factory automation.  At the time, the Japanese labor market had simply run out of labor.  It was just before their big economic crash and crony capitalism/soft National Socialism was all the rage.  Folks like C. thought you could automate, employ everybody, and pay astronomical wages because Japan was doing it.

Milton Friedman Explains It All

Only a few little problems with that line of reasoning.  First, the Japanese protected their markets from many American products (always a no-no from the Libertarian perspective).  Second, they were selling great products all around the world, partly due to government subsidies of their crony-capitalist businesses (another big Libertarian no-no).  Just a few years later, their economy imploded.  The example to look at is the implosion that they still have not recovered from, because they continue their same bad policies.

Fun Propaganda Tweet Of The Weekend

Noticed this little gem this AM:

@Truseattleite Truseattleite

@JohnTagliaferro If you were any type of educated man you would know there is a difference between communism and socialism. try research.

18 Nov via TweetDeck

Hitler and Stalin

The  Twitter-length answer is that: Communism (International Socialism) is a subset of Socialism.  What is hilarious every trip of the train is how the Socialists (National, International, Scientific, Democratic) all pipe up that anybody who notices this needs more education.

No, little Ninja, we do not need any more education.  We usually arrive at this realization by examining the facts in spite of the propaganda from the Western Education Industry.

They might be different in rhetoric, but in practice they are the same.

Obama has some catching up to do if he is going to be a hero of the Left.

PS. @Truseattleite, if Socialism is somehow divorced from Communism and you #Occupy urchins truly believe that you are something different from Communists, you might want to direct your education advice at the folks making your posters:

By-the-by, that "power fist" goes back to the 1860s or earlier.  The Democrats opposing Lincoln used it in their posters.

Was Hitler Really That Bad?

Yes, of course he was.  Now that I have your attention, the real question is: How can anybody think that Lenin, Stalin and Mao were not bad, or even half bad?  It has to do with marketing, called propaganda when it comes from the government.

Hitler bad

As I have mentioned before in Socialists and Marketing, the Socialist is under the impression that every consumer choice is made due to some marketing campaign.  An additional thought now is that Socialists, and Leftists in general, are particularly susceptible to advertising.  It does explain the actions of the Bloombergs, Obamas, and Ayers of the world quite nicely.  Whatever they decide is right and proper is always accompanied by a massive marketing blitz, along with attempts to silence any opposition to their "we are doing it for you" do-goodery.

Stalin not so bad?

What does this have to do with Hitler?  Everything, actually.  With one edict, Stalin turned his Socialist kinsman, atheist Germanic Pagan, vegetarian, cigarette hating, industry nationalizing, frustrated artist into a Right-Winger.  Stalin's order, that Communism was "Left" and everything else was "Right" went out to the Communist true-believers in the "commanding heights of society" to echo for centuries.  In 1928, not even Social Democrats were "Left" enough for Stalin:

Hence the tasks of the Communist Parties:

Firstly, to wage an unceasing struggle against Social-Democratism in all spheres -- in the economic and in the political sphere, including in the latter the exposure of bourgeois pacifism with the task of winning the majority of the working class for communism.

Secondly, to form a united front of the workers of the advanced countries and the labouring masses of the colonies in order to stave off the danger of war, or, if war breaks out, to convert imperialist war into civil war, smash fascism, overthrow capitalism, establish Soviet power, emancipate the colonies from slavery, and organise all-round defence of the first Soviet Republic in the world.

Such are the principal problems and tasks confronting the Sixth Congress.

These problems and tasks are being taken into account by the Executive Committee of the Comintern, as you will easily see if you examine the agenda of the Sixth Congress of the Comintern.

An adorable Mao?

Stalin was in a squabble about Socialist competition and a few years later, he was executing folks like Trotsky, not because they were free-market capitalists, but because they were not Communist enough, especially as their followings grew.  Note the beginnings of the conflagration of fascist.  Stalin lumped the Fascists of Italy in with the Nazis of Germany, whirled the red blender and they became one-in-the-same for the rest of Leftwing history.

Any lie was fine after that, like this one: Not until Germany’s tanks were on the borders of England and France did those governments ‘switch’ sides: now it was their imperialist domination being threatened.  Bolding mine, least anybody miss the detail of absurdity that Socialists toss about.

In their attempts to draw a distinction between the "real" Socialists and those fake National Socialists, the Communist hive came up with a neat little checklist aimed at the National Socialists.  One little problem with that, it describes the Soviet system to perfection.  Quoting just the first point here, the rest is just as comical.

There are several fundamental characteristics of fascism, among them are:

1. Right Wing: Fascists are fervently against: Marxism, Socialism, Anarchism, Communism, Environmentalism; etc – in essence, they are against the progressive left in total, including moderate lefts (social democrats, etc). Fascism is an extreme right wing ideology, though it can be opportunistic.

Meanie Mussolini?

Sure, all of these leftist parties are rivals with each other, the same way Republicans and Democrats in America.  The same way that allies Hitler and Mussolini faced off against each other in France, at the beginning. But National Socialists (fascists in the text) are anti-Environmentalism vs. Communists/Socialists as grand stewards of the earth?   Sounds good on paper, but in reality the Soviet Union, and later China, North Korea, Haiti and Cuba, all destroyed the environment they controlled in rates and volumes unparalleled in all of human history.  Meanwhile, the German National Socialists institutionalized their Environmentalist Movement before and during WWII, called Reichsnaturschutzgesetz (RNG, Reich Nature Protection Law).

Of course, the marketing campaign that only a Socialist could fall for does not end there and what has been referenced above does not explain why Hitler, a murderer of 12 million people can overshadow Stalin, a murderer of 20 million, or for that matter Mao, a murderer of 77 million as the worst human in history.  Arguably, the runner up behind Hitler should be Lenin, with his Cheka murders knocking off about 0.5 million and intentional famine starving millions more. They are all bad, all horrible pieces of disgusting human filth.  But not to the Left, who like to sport t-shirts with images like this:

Heroes of the Left have the highest body counts.

It all goes back to Stalin's Third Period Declaration of 1928.  Once the Socialists get an order, the large portion who take their marching orders from Moscow directly or indirectly, they follow it to any extreme.  After Hitler and Mussolini were declared "bad", for being more popular internationally than Stalin and nothing else, the professors, and other writers populating the commanding heights of society, set to work with a "Stalin good/Hitler bad" narrative that continues today.

Still not convinced?  Ever hear of Alexander Solzhenitsyn?  He was a Gulag survivor who wrote a few good books.  However, not until Soviet leader Khrushchev made a secret speech could his books about the Gulag could be published.  At least the speech was supposed to be a secret.  Israeli intelligence furnished the US Central Intelligence agency a copy, they in turn furnished the New York Times a copy and it was published.  Immediate howling ensued from the true believers of Soviet Socialism, they likened any criticism of Stalin to "spots on the sun", partly because the news came from somewhere besides Moscow.  Eventually Moscow did own up to it, but the speech was either ignored or used as evidence by Western Communists that Khrushchev destroyed communism.

No, Hitler's reputation as "worst ever" certainly has nothing to do with genocide, murder, or intentional starvation.  The people of Finland, the Balkan States and Taiwan can attest that it has nothing to do with "totalitarianism" either.  It is due to marketing of the worst kind.