Seductive ideology takes over Jan. 20

-By David Huntwork

The modern political persuasion called Liberalism can be compared to a beautiful seductive temptress. Alluring and destined to feel good for a while, but after a fling with this wily ideology one is left realizing that the intoxicating goddess was more like a cheap prostitute. This seducer of the mind and soul leaves one intellectually and spiritually bankrupt, and infected with a life long hatred of tradition, morals and values. The Liberal or Progressive ideology is definitely a feel good political philosophy. As the Bible so wisely warns us to resist the temptations of the flesh so must we resist the emotional temptation and seduction of modern Liberalism.

Liberalism is full of great sounding ideas such as inclusion, acceptance, dignity, equality, social justice, human rights, and diversity. It seduces the naive and the idealist with its promise of compassion and tolerance. Who doesn’t want peace, harmony and justice? Who doesn’t want to feed the hungry and house the homeless? Such simple sentiments stir the hearts of the masses. It is a slippery slope philosophy that sucks one in with statements that are hard to disagree with but the Utopian dreams lead to social engineering, the nanny state and the abandonment of common sense.
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Left Doesn’t Mind When Gov’t Takes Over Art… When Dems Are In Charge

-By Warner Todd Huston

So, what sort of hue and cry do you think would have been raised if President Bush had proposed that he develop an “art czar” like Obama is proposing? Do you think that the left would have eagerly agreed with the idea that a President Bush should be in control of art in America — at any level whatever?

No, high dudgeon would have been the likely outcome if Bush had proposed to invent the pseudo cabinet position of “art czar” answerable only to the executive branch. Once again Bush would have been excoriated by the left as stamping on people’s Constitutional rights of free expression. They would have lost their tiny little minds over the fact that government with a Republican at its head would be controlling art in any way at all. They would have been outraged anew over the audacity of the Bushhitler and apoplectic over his various evils.

And, at some level they’d have been right.

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Unions Decide THEY Should Say Who Gets Taxed

-By Warner Todd Huston

In the military it’s called “mission creep.” That is when you start out doing one thing and end up doing something that has nothing at all to do with what your main function is supposed to be. Unions in New Mexico have just shown mission creep, once again, because, for some reason, labor leaders in that state imagine it is their duty to tell government what sort of taxes should be invented for the citizens of Santa Fe.

These so-called labor leaders have decided to urge government to institute a “transfer tax” on houses that they deem “too big” to be allowed to be sold without confiscatory taxes imposed upon them.

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LA Times Celebrates Communist ‘Art’ Show

-By Warner Todd Huston

So, picture this… you are a refugee from the fall of Saigon, or, after it fell and in the midst of the many millions murdered by the communist oppressors that overtook the country in the 70s and 80s, you were lucky enough to escape with your life. Let’s say you finally move to California to enjoy a communist free life in the United States. Paradoxically, though, there you encounter a newspaper that scolds you and says that you are just a fearmonger for getting upset that there is a communist art show in your new community. And all the while you know that millions of your countrymen were murdered by the same communists that this paper, the L.A. Times, wants you to celebrate in art.

Would you get a tad upset? I think you might. Yet the L.A. Times thinks you should rather be interested in breaking “taboos,” having “open dialog” and to stop “the fear.” You should not get so gosh darned all upset at the commie art show. YOU are at fault here, not the commies.

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Chinese Humvee… er, Mengshi, we Mean… Outperforms American Humvee

-By Warner Todd Huston

Don’t you just love it when other nations have such grand successes in the realm of science, technology, and engineering? Isn’t it great when, all on their own without any help from anyone, a backwards country such as China can produce a battlefield transport vehicle that is far better than our poor American version? And, they did it without any espionage, too.

And if you believe that…

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Today’s Podcast: Accountants Demand Bailout

-By Warner Todd Huston

I have been doing podcasts for a while, now, and from here on in they will appear here when posted at TalkShoe. I am finally getting around to being a bit more proactive in alerting you all to the podcasts.

This one is a reading of my satire posted several days ago, Accountants Seek Bailout.

Feel free to visit the Publius Forum TalkShoe page to see my past podcasts. New podcasts appear monthly, or whenever the mood strikes me to do one.

Disgruntled ACORN Employees — Loose Nuts Strike back at the Tree

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last year a scandal rocked ACORN when it was revealed that the brother of the founder of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Dale Rathke, was caught by the ACORN board embezzling one million dollars in the organization’s operations cash. For eight years founder Wade Rathke hid the theft from public consumption as well as from his fellow ACORN board members and tried to arrange a pal of his to “pay back” the money to cover up his brother’s theft. (see here, here, and here)

Now, several ousted members of the ACORN board are seeking a federal criminal investigation into their ouster and Dale Rathke’s theft. The self-dubbed ACORN 8, led by Marcel Reid and Karen Inman, were removed from the ACORN board last year after they failed to convince others to join their efforts to instigate a federal probe of the embezzlement.

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The All Hat, No Cattle Obama Recovery Plan

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Caucus Blog of The New York Times says that Barack Obama’s transition staff are claiming that his so-called economic recovery plan will be a “paperless plan.” By that, they mean that there will be no “detailed documents, cost estimates” or the sort of announcements and “fanfare that capital watchers expect for the unveiling of major initiatives.”

It seems that, in Papal fashion, Obama plans to issue lofty rhetoric from the balcony to adoring crowds, then will retreat back inside his chambers to allow others to “fill in details.”

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Unions Ready to Pounce on 111th Congress

-By Warner Todd Huston

Unions gave many millions of dollars to elect Democrats and Barack Obama last November. Now they want payback. And, at least according to The New York Times, it is to begin with a bang.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D,CA) is planning an early push of two pay “discrimination” bills ASAP.

Last year, President George W. Bush threatened to veto both the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would overturn a 2007 Supreme Court decision making it more difficult to sue over past pay discrimination, and the Paycheck Fairness Act, which closes loopholes allowing employers to get around the 1963 law requiring equal pay for equal work.

As in all things Democratic Party, the Ledbatter Act was based on the lie that this Ledbetter woman was discriminated against. Ledbetter had every opportunity under the law for redress by waited too long to take her former employer to court, exceeding her 180 day complaint period. But, who needs rules, eh?

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New Labor Sec Claims SHE Can ‘Create’ Jobs?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Hill is reporting that Obama’s newly minted Labor Secretary was “pressed” on the job losses recently reported by the federal government. Oddly enough, Rep. Hilda Solis (D, CA) imagines she is somehow imbued with the ability to create jobs.

Lawmakers quizzed Solis as to how she could best reverse the jobs decline for a number of sectors in the economy, from healthcare workers to those afflicted with disabilities. One solution the California congresswoman recommended was focusing on creating new “green-collar” jobs. That could include retrofitting government buildings to meet energy-efficiency standards and installing solar panels, among other tasks that would develop America’s alternative energy production.

So, when, exactly, did it become the job of the Sec. of Labor to “create” jobs? What magical powder was she given to sprinkle upon the earth for these jobs to rise forth like a spring daffodil?

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Inquisition or Scientific Investigation?

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Is it in the spirit of scientific research to ostracize and to punish anyone who brings new and contradictory evidence to the table?

The Spanish Inquisition was not an effort to discover the truth. It was a means to eliminate any dissent from orthodoxy.

Today’s ferocious reaction by the scientific establishment against any voice questioning the hypothesis of man-made global warming is remarkably similar in spirit to the Inquisition.

On one level, none of this is surprising. It’s a reflection of human nature. Everyone wants to protect his turf and to preserve his claim to recognition. Science, however, is supposedly welcoming to revision of hypotheses to account for new evidence. In the fields of cosmology and nuclear particle physics new evidence continually necessitates theoretical revisions.
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Workers Deserve Better Than a Big Labor Lackey

The Heritage Foundation

Today may well turn out to be a major turning point in the history of the labor movement, and not because Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) will face questions at her Secretary of Labor confirmation hearings in the Senate. No, the bigger story is the voice vote conference call Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern has scheduled for 2 pm today. If things go the way Stern plans, the SEIU board will approve the forced break up of the third largest SEIU affiliate in the country, SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW). The UHW’s sin? Their leader, Sal Rosselli, has been a big critic of Stern’s leadership. The Los Angeles Times reports:

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Lowering Expectations for Obama

-By Warner Todd Huston

Reuters ran a little flak for Barack Obama trying to help dull the outrageous expectations placed on The One by his irrationally exuberant adherents in theirs headlined “Congress faces historic challenges” — As if no other Congress has faced “historic challenges” before? Reuters assures us, though, that times are so bad that we should not expect Obama to live up to any of his outlandish promises. This way, of course, if Obama reneges on them, the Old Media can remind everyone that it’s really our fault for expecting too much, not Obama’s for reneging.

Naturally, we get the kind of Bush-is-worst rhetoric we expect from Reuters but we also find that Reuters seems to have forgotten that Congress itself has even lower ratings than does Bush. And Reuters starts off the story conveniently forgetting that the Democrats have controlled Congress since 2006.

Democrats will pack greater clout when the new Congress convenes on Tuesday but they face enormous expectations from voters as they grapple with two wars, a financial crisis and record budget deficits.

Yeah, “greater clout.” But they’ve been in control since 2006 and faced a weakened president to boot. But, have Congressional Democrats had no “expectations” since 2006? Let us also not forget the two wars they have to “grapple with” were approved by the Democrats almost to a man and that the record deficits and the financial crisis were engineered by many of their own votes.

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Accountants Seek Bailout

-By Warner Todd Huston

Washington- In this current economic climate, bailouts for industries in the private sector are quickly becoming the chief form of reform and stability. From newspapers to the financial sector to the auto industry, Congress is infusing life saving money into the bloodstream of the country’s economy.

But one sector is finding itself over burdened at an alarming rate. Critics say that much more strain will find the CPA’s and accountants of America buckle and something needs to be done before it’s too late.

Milton Nebish, president of the B.A.N.A.L., the recently combined accountants unions the Bureau of Accountancy and the National Accountants League, is urging Congress to pass SB069, the so called Accountant’s Relief bill, when Congress gets back in session this year.

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Missouri Moves to Make Secret Ballot Required by Law

-By Warner Todd Huston

The misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) will take away the secret ballot for potential union members and force them to openly declare their preferences for or against a union, causing that worker to be easily open to intimidation by union thugs. This is a law currently in the table in Congress, one that Barack Obama has pledged to push through regardless of how it eliminates one of the oldest democratic rights there is.

But, now Missouri is trying to head off the possible federal enactment of “card check” (the provision that eliminates the secret ballot) by legislating that a secret ballot is protected by state law.

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A Liberal Glimpses the Truth, Albeit Dimly

-By Thomas E. Brewton

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert denounces spending borrowed money, apparently unaware that he is stepping on the party line.

Mr. Herbert is about as far left in his liberal-progressive ideology as any writer in today’s mainstream media. Yet he has glimpsed enough of the truth to identify consumption floated by excessive debt as a cause of our present economic woes.

Read the whole column: Stop Being Stupid.

All conservatives, I believe, will wholeheartedly second Mr. Herbert’s assertion that, “Somehow, over the past few decades, that has become the American way: to pay for things — from wars to Wall Street bonuses to flat-screen TVs to video games — with money that wasn’t there.”

There are, however, important points of divergence reflecting Mr. Herbert’s economic paradigm.
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Technological Parking Meters Manifest Statist Mindset

-By Frederick Meekins

One of the simple delights in the age of vehicular travel is coming across an empty parking space that still has time on the meter. Since the beast — namely the municipalities obtaining revenue from the meter — is still getting the amount of money it is due whether the spot is occupied by one or two cars in the purchased amount of time, one would think the taxmasters wouldn’t care and simply let the lucky motorist enjoy one of the few pleasures remaining in our increasingly bleak and overcontrolled world.

However, it seems that technology is being used once more to tighten the noose of government around the neck of the law abiding citizen.

According to a Washington Post story titled “Meters Deny Parking Handouts“, a number of companies are developing devices sensitive enough to reset themselves once they detect that the space is no longer occupied. Instead of harassing motorists, perhaps these tech-heads should turn their sophisticated detection sensors towards securing America’s border.
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Munchausen’s by Proxy

-By Dan Scott

As a normal person viewing the entire taxation and government benefit program structure one could not blame them as concluding it is a Rube Goldberg approach to governance. Government policy or more accurately liberal policy is about taking money only to give it back in a convoluted scheme to somehow bring about equality. A myriad of taxes are taken at every level of business and personal activity. This is justified under the guise of government meeting the needs of the people. To decide whose needs the government should be serving, groups of people are stereotyped and assigned victim status being called the poor. The poor it is said needs the government to help them because poverty is not a choice but an accident of birth. The logic goes like this, if you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you obviously will want for nothing since your caretakers will meet all your needs and give you every advantage to succeed in life whether that be a guaranteed income for life, a job in the family business, a higher education to work a well paying job, good health care, etc. On the other hand if that same baby were born into a poor household, he/she would have none of those advantages and therefore is it unfair. Since America is a wealthy society, it falls upon society to make it fair by giving everyone a chance to be equally successful.

On the surface such an argument about equality may make some sense until you delve into it’s assumptions. The first assumption is about poverty and wealth being an accident. Neither is an accident, making bad financial decisions doesn’t make you wealthy nor does making good financial decisions make you poor. Success is a choice, not an accident. This is called sophistry, making false assertions using false arguments. It follows that parents are responsible for the care of their offspring and therefore how that parent carries out that responsibility affects the outcome. It is the parent’s responsibility to make good decisions that will benefit the child and themselves. The ability of a parent to give equal opportunity as another parent is an impossibility. The ability of one individual to be equal in every way (both mentally and physically) to another one let alone an entire nation of individuals is also impossible. Inequality is a fact of life and therefore to demand what is impossible is sophistry. The equality argument advanced by liberals is based on the fallacious impossible premise of total equality. The equality as advanced by the Constitution and Declaration of Independence is one of opportunity under the Law with limitations on “government’s ability” of giving one group or individual more to one than others.
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The Nutrooters Newest Hope for Hope-n-Change

-By Warner Todd Huston

Eli Pariser, the delusional Nutroot kingpin of MoveOn.org, has been allowed a few column inches of space in the Washington Post to reveal his hope for some Obama hope-n-change, and his op ed is a doosie, for sure. Headlined “Will He Bring Change.gov We Can Believe In?,” Pariser gives voice to his most hopiest of hopeiness that Obama is the True One that they all hope he is. All joking aside, this is a pretty revealing op ed for its utter inability at introspection or, on the other hand, its complete lack of honesty — I’m not sure which.

In fact, Pariser’s very first paragraph reveals his own extremism, an extremism that he pretends doesn’t exist (that being the lack of introspection, or the cynical attempt at covering the truth to which I was alluding).

So, how’s the Obama administration doing so far?

It’s a trick question: We’re still about minus-23 days in. But already, folks on the left and the right are furiously reading tea leaves, worrying about whether he’s as progressive as promised or trying to turn lemons into lemonade (“Hillary Clinton at State: a victory for conservative foreign policy values”). Through all this, there’s been surprisingly little focus on what may be the most important question Obama faces.

As Pariser mentions, Obama hasn’t taken office and so far all he has are appointments and a lot of vacation time, so no administration exists. This isn’t Obama’s fault, nor something to hold against him, but Pariser’s fevered imagination is running amuck, here.

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Have Yourself A Theistic (Not Atheistic) Little Christmas

-By Frederick Meekins

From at least 1994 when I remember writing my first column on the subject, despisers of the Almighty and liberals of the most spineless of stripes have conspired to undermine Christmas as a national celebration in the attempt to downplay and ultimately eliminate public recognition of God in general and His only begotten Son Jesus Christ in specific. These efforts have been so widespread that I was able to compile columns written about them over the years into a book titled “Yuletide Terror & Other Holiday Horrors”.

Though the American people have been manipulated and their resistance worn down on a number of fronts to the point that they now let slide any number of outrages that would have caused considerable uproar in the past, for the most part citizens have been quite vocal about attempts by secular leftists to ban acknowledgment of the Christmas season. However, now that traditionalists have asserted the right to publicly affirm their god-given heritage, secularists are responding with alternative displays of their own promoting their own particular worldview.
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Is CNN Pushing Kids to Ask For a Salary for First Lady Michelle?

-By Warner Todd Huston

**VIDEO below fold**

CNN has a segment that they call “CNN Student News” that is supposed to highlight the news of the day for the kiddie set. Pursuant to that, in a December 15 segment, CNN floats a question asking if Michelle Obama (or any First Lady) should get a government salary just for being First Lady?

But, what we really ended up with is a slight to those same students to whom CNN was ostensibly relating the news. No where in the report was there any talk of the Constitution in particular nor the law in general as the CNN anchor cajoled the kids into viewing with awe the “work” of the First Lady and in fostering in them a feeling that First Ladies should be paid for this “work.”

In fact, one interview during the segment even made happy talk of the fact that, during the Clinton administration, Hillary Clinton’s travel and causes forced a “moving public works project” wherever she went. There was no hint of the burden this posed on the places she visited and no sense that these expenditures were unfunded nor that such expenditures were never voted on by the people of the states she visited. The kids are left uninformed that this “moving public works” burden was forced upon taxpayers unawares.

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Our Bailout Culture and the Beauty of Bankruptcy

By Selwyn Duke

The story of the Prodigal Son teaches a beautiful lesson about repentance and forgiveness. As you may know, it involves a lazy, irresponsible young man who insists upon taking his share of the family inheritance immediately and striking out on his own. He then proceeds to squander it on a dissolute lifestyle and ends up destitute, living like an animal. Duly chastened and humbled and purged of his spirit of entitlement, he approaches his father in contrition and asks for aid, saying that he would be satisfied to just be treated as a servant. The father, overwhelmed with joy, forgives his son, proclaims him “found” and holds a celebration commemorating his return. Of course, the idea is that he was “found” spiritually; he had developed wisdom, the capacity to not just manage money, but life.

Now, after 2000 years, we have gone from Prodigal Son to prodigal sin, and I imagine that today the story might unfold quite differently. The son’s problem would probably be related via cell phone, be chalked up to a matter of money, and remedied not with character formation but cash flow.
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The GOP Cannot Win Until…

-By Warner Todd Huston

Of course we are all roaming around trying to figure out what will work, what hasn’t worked and whose fault it all is. Powell blasts Limbaugh, Limbaugh replies, voters blast McCain, the moderate Republican illiterati try to blame it all on Palin and the social conservatives, the conservatives say the country club set has destroyed us, and EVERYONE knows that the GOP acted like drunken sailors on the spending side… there is enough finger pointing all around, for sure.

But, how are we going to get it all back? How are we going to win at the ballot box? That is the question, naturally. There is a model of how to achieve that victory, though, if we have the good sense to utilize it.

David Frum appeared on the Hugh Hewitt show on December 16 and said that, in his opinion, the “base” of the GOP is no longer enough to get a president elected. He defined the base as comprising white males that make over $30,000 a year and are not college graduates. He said that the more college a voter has the more likely that they will vote Democrat.

Now, Frum is 100% wrong on a lot of things — like Sarah Palin, for instance — but he is dead on with his assessment about what a college “education” does to an American. A college education turns an American into a Democrat for the simple reason that there isn’t anything truly American taught in the largest number of our colleges and universities. They are taught to be Euro-like, non-traditional Americans and the main outlet for that ideology is the Democratic Party.

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A Preacher for the Gnostic Religion of Socialism

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Naomi Klein, a Canadian and the new rock-star evangelist of secular socialism, is representative of the New Left activists who populate the Democrat/Socialist Party.

Radical-left activist doctrine ignores the historical fact that every cohesive and enduring political society must be ordered by a commonly held understanding of human nature and human morality.

The profile in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine is a long and revealing one. Outside Agitator: Naomi Klein and the new new left gives the reader a sympathetic view of the anti-everything orientation of the present-day progeny of early 20th century families who were thoroughly imbued with gnostic expectations of a socialist heaven on earth. Families who passionately believed in remaking human society and human nature to achieve blissful, benevolent social conditions by purely materialistic means.
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Doncha Love Chicago Deep-Bleep Politics?

-By John Armor

Mark Twain noted that any word becomes funny when repeated often enough. The arrest of Illinois Governor Blagojevich provided proof of that, in the excerpts from the tapes.

Here’s my analysis of the Chicago situation (Blagojevich fought his way up from the South Side) in the language of the soon-to-be former Governor, and his equally articulate wife.
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When Did Illinois Stop Being America?

-By Warner Todd Huston

This debacle of Governor Rod Blagojevich endeavoring to sell a U.S. Senate seat for mere personal enrichment proves once and for all that the state of Illinois is no longer an American state. It is so far around the bend that there is no longer any legitimacy to either the state or any local government. Illinois is no better than the worst banana republic.

We have arrived at a time when lucrative state posts have been multiplied without necessity, when people have become pensioners of the state without bounds, and government is the single largest employer summarily supplanting any hint of capitalism. We are mired in a universal policy of governing by bribery and corruption, with all businesses being ignored and trampled under the foot of regulators and their open palms. All offices here are bought and sold at extravagant prices and the debt for this thievery is laid on the shoulders of the people with the highest taxes in the country.

Yet, even as the money flows uninhibited into the pockets of our “elected” officials in both parties, Illinois is falling apart. Roads, bridges, hospitals and schools are crumbling and those that have been built are of the lowest quality because so much of the money has gone to grasping unions, bribes and graft.

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Auto Unions Reason for Senate Denial of Bailout

-By Warner Todd Huston

For helping put American auto makers in the mess it is currently in, one might say that the unions deserve this thumbs down vote. Congressional Republicans blocked the $14 billion auto bailout on Thursday and one of the main reasons was because of undue union excess of a sort that sees US cars over priced at thousands of dollars per vehicle compared to all other competition.

According to the Associated Press, the refusal of unions to revisit their contracts with an eye toward taking cuts is one of the reasons the bailout was denied.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) was concerned that the current bailout plan did not demand any changes occur in the industry ahead of the the payout from Congress.

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Barack Obama: Neither Oblivious Nor Deceptive

-By Frank Salvato

Death by a thousand cuts. That is exactly what is happening to President-Elect Barack Obama’s credibility as he and his campaign continue to abuse the “plausible deniability” political tactic. As the list of radicals, political opportunists and ethically challenged elected officials that Mr. Obama portends not to know continues to grow, the voters who believed they voted for “hope” and “change” are starting to realize that the promise of an Obama presidency, well, it isn’t so much…

Admittedly, I did not vote for Barack Obama to be President of the United States. I didn’t support him not because of the color of his skin (in fact I would have voted for Michael Steele or even Ward Connerly should they have decided to run and made it to the ballot). I didn’t support Mr. Obama because of tangible reasons that included three significant facts:
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The Socialist and the Stone

By Selwyn Duke

When I was still within a stones’ throw of ladhood, I had an acquaintance who was essentially a socialist. I can’t say for sure he proclaimed himself as such — although I believe he did — but that was certainly where his passions lay.

He was a man of about 60 years, and his exterior matched his ideology. Much of his hair and its melanin had obviously been redistributed, and he certainly was the very model of a modern minor socialist.

I’d say the year was about 1989, the tail end of the booming Reagan era, and the scene was a city park in the Bronx, New York. I was an aspiring tennis player, and it was where I used to hone my skills, although by this time I had moved on to better things and was only an infrequent visitor. The man in question had long been a recreational player at the park, although he never showed signs of enjoying the game very much. But, then, he didn’t really show signs of enjoying anything. Bubbling exuberance did not ooze from his pores.
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