A grey eminence in the White House 254

Behold a young hippy woman shall conceive, and shall bear a son, and his name shall be – okay, not Emanuel (‘God with us’), but Barack (‘Blessed’).  However, when Barack becomes President of the United States he will appoint Emanuel as White House chief of staff, and Emanuel will be the one who actually does the job. 

Rahm Emanuel, deeply experienced and full of passionate conviction, has accepted the post of Eminence Grise. He’ll be the wizard behind the curtain. 

Facts about him. He too, like the President Elect, is a politician from Chicago. (Yes, you are right to look nervous!)

He was, bewilderingly, a ballet dancer. But do not expect him to step lightly – he is nicknamed ‘Rahmbo’ for good reason. He’s a hard attacker.

Dare we hope that as he is Jewish and his father was a member of the Irgun, the passionately Zionist terrorist  group (which helped or hindered the birth of the State of Israel depending on your point of view), that he will counter the influence on the President of his good friend Rashid Khalidi, the PLO man? 

I’d say, don’t count on it. Emanuel is a man of the left. For such as he, leftism trumps everything, and in the world at large the left is now predominantly anti-Israel.

We can only wait and see. 

Posted under Commentary by Jillian Becker on Thursday, November 6, 2008

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Join, unite, communize! 42

 The headmaster in my last entry, A Comedy for Comfort, would be happy with the meaning of the presidential election as discerned by Ben Shapiro in his Townhall article today:

Barack Obama was the vessel for that [unity] movement. He was an utter cipher. But he embodied the need of the American public for unity by hearkening back to the ultimate unifying feature of American life: third-grade slogans. He spouted Hope and Change. He told us, “We’re All Americans.” He told us, “Yes, We Can.”

From any other politician, it would be ridiculous drivel. From a black candidate, it was inspiring. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson didn’t talk like that – they spoke the language of division. Because Obama spoke the language of unity, he had to be a moderate. So went our logic.

Barack Obama had us from the moment he said, “Hope.” In that moment, Obama accomplished two simultaneous transformations. First, he transformed himself into a moderate. Second, he transformed himself into a messianic figure, the object of our longing: the physical embodiment of America’s progression beyond racial conflict. If America wanted to move beyond conflict, what better way than to embrace a candidate who could end all racial conflict?

And the Obama campaign subtly played on this theme. They implied that if we voted against him, we were engaging in racial hatred; some supporters even implied America would undergo a race war if he lost. That’s the last thing we wanted.

We wanted to feel good again. That is what the Great Election of 2008 was about. It was about Americans’ desire to feel a part of Something Larger. To do something together, as Americans. In today’s day and age, that Something Larger cannot be the America Ronald Reagan preached about – the left has attacked that America as racist, sexist, and selfish. That Something Larger had to be an individual who could provide us with the feeling of unity.

Barack Obama told us that we could do Something Larger simply by voting for him. When he said, “Yes We Can,” and we followed by screaming it, chanting it, shouting his name in unison, we were Doing Something Larger. We were uniting.

America has always recognized that unity for its own sake is useless at best and dangerous at worst. Unifying behind a mysterious charismatic figure promising transformational change may make us feel good, but it is a betrayal of the open and honest governmental debate our Founding Fathers sought and so many Americans have fought and died to preserve.

Americans think they grew up during Election 2008. They think they moved beyond the past. In one way they did. In another, more important way, they regressed dramatically – to a time before politics mattered. In the next four years, there will be plenty of growing up to do.

Posted under Commentary by Jillian Becker on Thursday, November 6, 2008

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Electing a fraud 336

How would a community organizer, having a very large community to organize – the entire population of the United States – choose to do it? We know how. We have been told. The prospect is withering! 

David Limbaugh writes about the many lying slanders on America and the Bush administration that have been propagated ruthlessly by the Democrats, the fraudulence of the Obama campaign, and why we should be afraid.

The whole column is a must-read here. An extract:

Everything about Obama’s campaign is fraudulent. He masquerades as a uniter while dividing, polarizing and alienating us. He denies he’s liberal, when objective sources score him as the most liberal senator. He says he barely knows militants and radicals with whom he has spent his lifetime cavorting and whose worldviews – horrifyingly – he shares. He brazenly disguises welfare redistributions as tax cuts. He and his surrogates keep changing his tax plan.

With his ideas about spreading the wealth, entrepreneurial selfishness, the ongoing "original sin" in our Constitution, the inherent evil of corporations, nationalized health care, and the civil rights movement not doing enough to bring about "economic justice" – a euphemism for "Marxism" used by radicals, such as Bill Ayers, who still hate America – are you not concerned at just how far Obama might go if he’s got a nearly veto-proof Democratic majority at his back?

With his known discomfort with American exceptionalism, his naive mindset about good and evil in the world, his reckless underestimation of threats to America, his stated intention to disarm our nuclear weapons unilaterally, his open-borders extremism, his willingness to relax our intelligence monitoring, and his misguided concern for terrorists’ rights, how can America be as secure under his watch?

With his sordid background in "community organizing" and his symbiotic relationship with an organization that is engaged in a systematic effort to steal this election, his thug tactics to investigate and silence his critics, and his Democratic colleagues’ willingness to use government to shut down conservative talk radio, are you not worried about our liberties under an Obama administration?

Before our very eyes, America stands poised to elect as president the most radical man ever to run for this office credibly. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Posted under Commentary by Jillian Becker on Tuesday, November 4, 2008

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The terrible transformation of America 39

 Dennis Prager outlines the transformation of America under  one-party Democratic government : 

Economic growth will be slowed in favor of achieving economic equality.

Unions will be allowed to abolish secret ballots.

Serious attempts will be made to shut down the most effective opposition to the left – talk radio.

The defense budget will be severely decreased.

Judges will be chosen based on their commitment to empathize with the downtrodden (Obamas own stated criterion for choosing judges), not based on their commitment to judging according to neutral rules that are blind to the individuals status in life.

Same-sex marriage will become national law as the Defense of Marriage Act is repealed and liberal judges rule that defining marriage as man-woman is unconstitutional.

Coal, nuclear energy, and new drilling will be discouraged and dependency on foreign oil will therefore rise while rationing of energy is instituted.

Companies will seek to do more and more business abroad as they become taxed more than in any other Western country.

Israel will be pressured to make peace.

America will leave Iraq whether or not Iraq is ready for us to do so, thereby increasing Islamic terror there and elsewhere.

Parents will have fewer years to instill their values in their children, as earlier and earlier education becomes the norm.

Judeo-Christian values, the founding values of America, will continue to recede in influence as America becomes more and more a secular-left country like those of Western European.

And when all this – and much more – transforms America, no one American will be able to argue they didn’t know. Barack Obama promised it.

Posted under Commentary by Jillian Becker on Tuesday, November 4, 2008

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The apotheosis of Barry 109

If you google ‘Obama the Messiah’ you will find a website where numerous assertions that Barry Obama is a man of a different sort from other men, a messenger from elsewhere, a bearer of light, a transforming prophet, have been collected together, with images depicting him in the radiance that iconographically surrounds the Redeemer and saints in Christian lore and mythology. Some have even called him ‘the Messiah’. 

Astonishing!   

‘Christ’ is the Greek translation of  the Hebrew ‘Messiah’. It means ‘The Annointed’.  

So Barry is the Christ to these Americans. Barry Christ. Christ Barry. Ponder that, and conjecture what is to come. 

For one thing, what will they do, his devotees, when he fails – as he must – to deliver what they expect?  Those who vote him into power as just an ordinary politician, albeit one on whom they place extraordinary expectations, will probably find excuses for him. But to those who believe he has divine and miraculous powers, his failure to bring them into the Promised Land and transform their lives into a continuous state of rapturous bliss, will seem like deliberate betrayal.

What will they do then? Tear him to pieces, not just verbally but physically? Now that would not astonish me.  

Incidentally, ‘bearer of light’ is the meaning of ‘Lucifer’ – the devilish fellow to whom Saul Alinsky dedicated his book: Saul Alinsky being the Communist theorist of Community Organizing, who influenced and inspired both Hillary Clinton  and Barry Christ. 

So if Barry is a visitor from another world, which one is it? A higher and finer one, or a nether hell?

Posted under Commentary by Jillian Becker on Monday, November 3, 2008

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Viewpoint from Britain: the impotent media in the US elections 473

As I write this on the ultimate day of campaigning, the mainstream media has already decided the outcome of the US elections. Obama is everywhere – he is deemed a harbinger of hope and change to not just many Americans, but to a large proportion of the global populace as well. One young Palestinian in the Gaza strip was cold calling American households last week, persuading them to vote for this deity.
It is an old story, especially in the United States, that the media fails to correctly predict the election performance of conservative politicians. It is fair to say that the majority of the American media is fairly liberal; the noticeable exception is Fox News. These left wing media outlets spout ideas and opinions that are often adopted as ideals by society, An important and misleading consequence of the political position of the mainstream news services is the fallacious polls that the same media and the public love to exhibit and evaluate respectively. There is one theory proposed by the political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, called the ‘Spiral of Silence’, which is the idea that one is less likely to publicly support an idea that is carried by the minority for fear of isolation and requital from society. As a result, a particular motion is likely to receive less and less public support, thus exposing said idea to fewer and fewer people.
In England, one phenomenon of unexpected success is called the ‘Shy Tory Factor’. This term was coined in the 1990s by British opinion polling companies in response to the 1992 General Election. Despite the Conservative Party trailing 1% behind Labour, the former won the election with a lead of about 7.6%.
This discrepancy can be explained by a number of theories. The first is the fact I just previously mentioned – that the greater representation of the political left by the media gives rise to false hope and perhaps even can provide a dangerous sense of complacency to left wing politicians. The second theory is what I believe to be the narcissistic individual’s public need for society’s deference, an egotistical façade that hides the individual’s private whim – thus exists a covert growth of idiosyncratic sentiments. If a government at the end of its second or third term is unpopular with the mainstream left, then while publicly the virtuous middle class may denounce the ‘failing government’, those same ‘principled’ men and women will rush to vote for them when the polls open – perhaps because of a private admiration or quiet understanding of the abhorrent government’s policies, or perhaps just because of a lack of alternative acceptable politicians standing.
The third possibility for the inconsistency between predictions and realities is a word that has governed the concept of equality in the last hundred years: race. It seems apparent to me that race is a defining factor in the human consciousness, and however much equality is sought, there is a part of each single soul that craves identity. For example, in a completely different context, most Muslims will support a Palestinian state whereas more Jews will support the Jewish Israeli state. The concept of identity is prevalent in the quest for independent opinion, and for this reason Obama has bastions of support among some communities but not others. A recent YouGov poll found that Obama has an 82% lead among black voters, whereas Obama is trailing by 5% among white voters. In some states Obama appears to have almost 97% of the black vote.
Obama has a huge amount of support from the black vote, but this is not enough to win the election alone. Obama’s election team knows this and that is why they have campaigned so heavily amongst the white middle class America. These efforts appear to have worked and the polls are in Obama’s favour. Many newspaper columnists are speaking of Obama’s victory as if there need be no contest at all.
This could be a huge mistake. There is a phenomenon in elections, similar to the ‘Shy Tory Factor’, called the ‘Bradley Factor’. This is named after Tom Bradley, the candidate for the governor of California election. Despite enjoying a position far ahead in the polls, Bradley lost to his Republican rival. It was attributed to white voters privately voting differently from their public declaration to pollsters. This theory is similar to my previously mentioned suggestions for the ‘Shy Tory Factor’. There are many other examples of black politicians experiencing the effect of the Bradley factor: Harold Washington, Jesse Jackson, David Dinkins and Wilson Goode. In fact David Duke, the Nazi sympathizer and KKK member, experienced an inverted Bradley factor when he received a much larger proportion of the votes than polls had shown. The same happens in Britain: the BNP regularly does much better than expected, and no one is ever more surprised than the liberal media.
Juxtaposed against the Bradley factor is a suggested reverse Bradley factor and a concept known as the ‘Fishtown effect’. Douglas Wilder, the first black state governor has suggested that many Republicans will secretly vote for Obama while publicly declaring otherwise. The ‘Fishtown Effect’ however is the suggestion that usually bigoted white voters will vote for a black candidate because of economic concerns; in the present financial climate this theory could have a significant influence on the election.
But is the Bradley factor truly an example of cold, calculated racism? I would suggest that it is not the wish of one race to dismiss another, but rather a quest for identity and fraternalism. The uncertainties and confusion results from the furious denunciations from the media, who vilify individual figures, cultures and ideas. And regardless of the results of Tuesday’s election, sections of the World’s media, from Bangkok to San Francisco, will condemn the discriminatory minds of the American public. From the hoi polloi to the richest mansion dwellers, the inhabitants will be branded racists. If Obama loses the election, the voters will be accused of anachronistic racism; if Obama wins, some will be accused of lacking integrity and letting fear of inequality dictate their vote. Stanford University has worked hard to be ahead of the game. Christian Science Monitor: “Stanford University suggests that racial prejudice is eroding as much as 6 percentage points from Senator Obama’s support. One commentator has even suggested that white racism would be the only explanation for an Obama loss this November.”
And the true villain is actually the media – their shameless selective reporting, their composition of supercilious ideals and their lack of objectivity have irrevocably destroyed the continuation of a nonpartisan candid and free press. Although keen to malign other Democrats and the Republicans, the media has been hesitant to report news and rumours about Obama: from the incongruous gap between the discovery and the media report of the villainy of Reverend Wright’s speeches, to the bizarre association with Bill Ayers, and now the LA Times is overrun with requests that they persistently ignore, to release videotape they possess of Obama with a suspected PLO terrorist named Rashid Khalidi. Why would a very large newspaper not release a sensational news story so pivotal as this?
So do I believe the associations with Obama uncovered by the right and McCain’s camp are as serious as some would paint them? – Not really. I do believe though, that the burnt soul of the unscrupulously bias media is poisoning the democracy of the Western countries. I believe the same media is to blame for the misinformation and intolerance in politics that breeds bountifully during times of wanton ideals. However, I do know there is always independent thought, which leaves the opinionated editors and columnists shouting at deaf ears. And certainly the hurly burly media world can no longer explain a truth or encourage an honest purpose; it is an impotent force, multiplying in presence but with a fading influence; useless in a world of disobedient readers.

Posted under Commentary by Jillian Becker on Monday, November 3, 2008

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A Marxist racist windbag with vile connections 75

 Burt Prelutsky writes in an article titled America’s Last Will and Testament:

I keep hearing people say they don’t know Barack Obama. Oddly enough, I don’t think I’ve ever known a presidential candidate nearly so well. I may not have seen his birth certificate or his medical records, but I’ve certainly heard his words, his wife’s words and his pastor’s words, and I feel they’ve told me all I need to know about this demagogue.

I know that he believes in the Marxist principle of sharing the wealth, and I know that doesn’t refer to his own wealth, but to everybody else’s. I know that he shares Mrs. Obama’s lack of pride in America, and that, in his gut, he believes America is a racist nation.

I know he shares Rev. Wright’s hatred of white people. Because he depends on their votes, he keeps that belief under wraps, but it certainly comes through loud and clear in his books.

I know that the people he surrounds himself with, people like Wright, Father Pfleger, Louis Farrakhan, Tony Rezko and Bill Ayres, are vile. And the ones whom he is forced by circumstance to be allied with, people like Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and John Murtha, are not much better. 

Posted under Commentary by Jillian Becker on Monday, November 3, 2008

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On the eve of a probable Obaminable disaster 43

A Democratic presidency and Congress would turn America into a European-style welfare state in which millions are dependent on the government. It will be a different sort of government from that which the Founding Fathers intended. Government as the agent of forced redistribution becomes all-powerful. The principle of liberty is abandoned when economic equality is imposed. Such equality cannot co-exist with liberty; they are mutually exclusive. To choose dependence is to choose an equality of misery and bondage. 

 From an article in Townhall:

Ponder the words of the Scottish jurist and historian, Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler. Over 200 years ago, he provided a chilling observation on the fall of the Athenian Republic. America has been a beacon of liberty and hope for our citizens and the world for over 230 years. But Tytler warned of the natural rise and fall of every democracy:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence; from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage."

 

Posted under Commentary by Jillian Becker on Monday, November 3, 2008

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A soft spot for thugs 28

 Expect a big rise in crime under an Obama presidency.    

Obama, who would as president have the power to pardon criminals, isn’t a big fan of U.S. laws in general, at least not as currently written. He thinks they are racist, along with the courts.

"We have certain sentences that are based less on the kind of crime you commit than on what you look like," he told Howard University students last year. "It’s time to seek a new dawn of justice."

"Laws are sometimes malleable," he wrote two years ago, and he plans to "fix" what he sees as a "broken" criminal justice system. And he favors judges with the "empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American."

That worries some legal analysts. "If Obama wins," warns Northwestern University law professor Steven Calabresi, "we could possibly see the abolition of capital punishment and mass freeing of criminal defendants."

In fact, Obama in the 1996 questionnaire responded "no" to supporting capital punishment. His website now calls for unspecified "reform" of the death penalty, which he contended in his book "does little to deter crime."

Obama will, however, get tough on "hate crimes." He plans to pack the criminal section of Justice’s Civil Rights Division with African-American prosecutors, and make "hate crime a priority." …

 Suburban employers won’t be safe from Obama’s race cops, either.

"Anyone who thinks that such enforcement is no longer needed should pay a visit to one of the suburban office parks in their area and count the number of blacks employed there," Obama complained in his 2006 autobiography. …

It’s plain where Obama’s priorities lie.

"Jesus has a soft spot for thugs," preaches Rev. Otis Moss, the "wonderful young pastor," as Obama described him, who took over the pulpit from retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Obama’s longtime church in Chicago.

Apparently so does Obama.

Read more in the Front Page Magazine article here.

Posted under Commentary by Jillian Becker on Monday, November 3, 2008

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Obama at a loss for words 47

 From the Telegraph:

The United States is apparently about to choose as president the most inexperienced, untried and virtually unknowable (because there is so little to know) candidate who has ever run for that office at a time of unquantifiable international risk and unprecedented economic instability: a candidate who, as Bill Clinton revealed in a wonderfully back-handed "tribute", responded to the banking collapse by ringing every expert he could find (including Bill) to ask them what he should be saying.

Posted under Commentary by Jillian Becker on Sunday, November 2, 2008

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