Net Neutrality Explained

Now that Obama's FCC has finalized their "net neutrality" rules, it's time everyone understood the full impact of bureaucrats micro-managing broadband.  Here's but one piece...

Football, Marx, Smith, Cloward & Piven, Alinsky, Greece, and Obama

It’s Superbowl week, Greece just elected a Communist government, and Barack Obama has indicated he has no intention of changing his strategy, even after his historic mid-term rebuke.  It’s a perfect time for me to bravely attempt to tie these disparate things up in a neat little bow.  What’s more, I will do it with fully inflated analogies and rhetoric.

Suppose there were two football teams, the Marxists and the Smithians.  Each team has adopted an opposite management approach.  The Marxists have policies wherein every player, coach, and employee is paid the same, every player is given the same amount of game time, and positions are decided by a committee of people who've never played football.  The Smithians have policies wherein every player, coach, and employee negotiates their own salary, and game time and positions are determined by ability, circumstances, and a football coach’s judgment. 

Now suppose you were a committed Marxist who inherited the Smithian team.  How would you convert them to your preferred system? 

Karl Marx addressed this dilemma back in 1848 and prescribed violent revolution.  Of course, his world was vastly different from ours (and I don’t think he was thinking about football!).  Modern Marxists have searched for a less kinetic approach.  This has split the Marxists into two groups, one that still favors violent revolution and direct confrontation, and another that favors democratic revolution and indirect confrontation. 

Among the thinkers who preferred the latter approach were two people at Columbia University, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.  Their theory was that if Smithian economies were overburdened by progressive Marxist redistribution, they would eventually collapse in on themselves and Marxists would become the democratic majority.  The spark for the strategy was a tactic from Saul Alinsky, “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.”  In other words, load up on debt, dependency, and obligations, and then blame the Smithian system when it reaches a crisis.  This would achieve the same result Marx had prescribed, only politically and without violence.

This is exactly what has happened in Greece.  The Greek system collapsed in on itself because they had created a progressively redistributive system that resulted in a majority of the electorate being dependent on government.  This resulted in a massive debt burden that eventually became a crisis when the debt got downgraded to junk.  As a Euro member, Greece could not unilaterally print money to pay off its debt, a strategy countries have used throughout history.  Backed into a corner, the Greeks chose Communism, just as Cloward and Piven predicted. 

So, what’s this got to do with Barack Obama? 

What would a committed Marxist in the Cloward and Piven mold do if he obtained power in the US?  Would he work tirelessly for government rules to subsidize mortgages for those who cannot afford homes in the hope that it might collapse the system?  Would he maybe run up more debt in eight years than all previous presidents combined?  Would he reduce workforce participation and greatly increase government dependency?  Would he work tirelessly for progressive redistribution of wealth?  Would he avoid any direct Marxist or Socialist language and instead fall back on vague terms such as “hope” “change” and “fundamental transformation”?  Would he possibly nationalize healthcare, student loans, community colleges, daycare, etc. in an attempt to consolidate votes, and eventually collapse the system?  Would he try to flood the voter rolls with dependents and illegals? 

If you have followed Barack Obama and his past, you would know by now that he attended Columbia University and was introduced to the Cloward and Piven strategy there.  You might also know of his affinity for Saul Alinsky and his roots as an Alinsky Community Organizer.  You might also know that Frances Fox Piven was all but present at the signing of Obamacare.  You might also know that she is among those behind Obama’s recent executive action on immigration.   What you probably don’t know is that she, and the then living Richard Cloward, were present at the signing of Bill Clinton’s 1993 “Motor Voter” bill.

That's them right behind Clinton.  Do the math.   

Incidentally, which football team would you bet on long term, the Marxists or the Smithians?

(UPDATE:  An earlier version of this post placed Frances Fox Piven at the signing of Obamacare.  That was likely incorrect.)  

President Asterisk

Barack Obama did a lot of bragging last night in his SOTU.  Unfortunately, every one of his bullet points needs an asterisk – a big asterisk:  

·   On the Economy, Obama touted a host of positive economic results that have shown improvement since he became President.  *Unfortunately, what he will not mention is that he, or more accurately his philosophy, was to blame for the financial crisis that he supposedly “inherited”.  He did not inherit that mess, he caused it!  Redistribution of wealth, in this case redistribution of mortgage credit, was at the heart of the Affordable Housing Initiative that was begun in the 1990s by Democrats under Bill Clinton, and reached it’s apex in 2007 while Democrats, including Senator Barack Hussein Obama, ran congress.  No member of congress took more campaign money at a faster clip from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than Senator Obama.  Fannie and Freddie were ground zero in the subprime crisis, and Barack Obama was the subprime king.  This aspect of his past has been completely expunged from the historical record.  This is the mother of all asterisks. 

·   Two other big asterisks in the rosy economic picture:  Interest rates and debt.  *No president in American history has had an easier Federal Reserve policy, and no president was ever been given carte blanche to spend, borrow, and print money like Barack Hussein Obama.  Obama has borrowed, printed, and spent  $11 trillion appropriated from future generations - an unprecedented amount ($3.5 trillion from QE I, II, III, and $7.5 trillion in new borrowing).  If $11 trillion were distributed directly to the people, every family could be given $140,000 in cash!  And no president has had a 0% Fed funds rate for his entire presidency.  Not even close. 

·   There was a lot of bragging about helping the middle class.  Claims were made about rising wages.  None of it is true.  *Median wages have been falling since Obama became president, which is why polls show Americans still perceive we are in a recession. 

·   One of the biggest reasons for recent economic optimism is the decline in the cost of energy.  The asterisk:  *none of this is due to Obama, Democrats, or federal  policies.  It all came from private initiatives and state laws that permit fracking, horizontal drilling, and steam extraction. 

·   Obama wants more government intervention in childcare, education, and of course, healthcare.  The asterisk:  *the more government gets involved in childcare, the more kids grow up without families and end-up in a life of crime and dependency.  Government intervention in education and healthcare is precisely why both these areas got to crisis levels of inflation and mismanagement.  More government will lead to more of the same. 

·   Obama bragged about ending the war in Afghanistan. Afghanistan asterisk:  *actually, Bush had essentially decided that our goals were achieved in Afghanistan and he had already drawn down our forces.  Obama surged troops back into Afghanistan and nearly tripled our casualty rates (Bush = 630, vs Obama = 1726)!  Nothing more was gained from these additional deaths.  You probably didn’t know these numbers, right?

·   Obama bragged about a victory over terrorism (though he cannot get himself to admit that Islam has anything to do with it!).  The asterisk:  *really?  Anyone paying attention knows this is complete bullshit.  ISIS, Iraq, Libya, France, Yemen, Nigeria, Syria???  Hello… 

I could go on but what’s the point.  Obama still has about half the country mesmerized by his propaganda, which is aided and abetted by the pop media, pop culture, and pop academia. 

Obligatory Deflated Balls Meme

Je Suis Nakoula Basseley Nakoula

Hey, I think it's great that so many are showing solidarity for free speech in the wake of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo by Islamic extremists. But, how many spoke out after Benghazi when those murders were blamed, not on the attackers, but on a guy who posted a video on YouTube? Obama made a speech at the UN and all but blamed Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in front of the world saying, "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam". Then he had him arrested and put in jail for a year. No one said a word.

Obama's three strikes on Ferguson

On 8/15/14, after Barack Obama made his first comments in the wake of the Ferguson riots, I wrote:

I have no idea what happened in Ferguson, MO, and neither do you.  And we all agree any unnecessary death is a tragedy.  But we have a judicial system to deal with bad cops, if that turns out to be the case.  Rioting, looting, Molotov cocktails, death threats, and the like, should be singled-out as inexcusable no matter what the facts turn out to be.  Justice can only be served through our judicial system and that takes time, patience, civility, and wisdom.  Instead of making that case convincingly and emphatically, as a president should,  Barack Obama spoke to the nation in bland platitudes and equivocated.
America, we have a problem.

Four days later, after he commented again, I wrote:

Obama spoke to the nation again yesterday (8/18) and again equivocated.  If he wanted to avoid further violence, looting, anger, and hate, he could have explained to those calling for "death to Darren Wilson!" that we have a judicial system and that the facts will come out as they do in every public case, especially when there are dozens of eye witnesses as there are in this case.  But this case should not be tried on TV, or in the streets,  or from the pulpit, or with molotov cocktails.  Instead he drew a moral equivalence between our judicial system and looting rioters.  Think about this America -- The President of the United States, for political reasons, does not want to prevent further violence, looting, anger, and hate.

Tonight , 11/24/14, the grand jury spoke and the case is now closed.   The officer, Darren Wilson, was not charged with any crime because the jury believed he acted with justifiable use of force.

Again the president spoke and again mistook his role for that of agitator.  He accused the judicial system of racism.  He made no mention of the fact that Michael Brown would be alive today if he had obeyed officer Wilson.  He made no mention of his faith in the grand jury or the public servants who worked this case according to the law.  He made no mention of the officer whose life has also been upended by Michael Brown's belligerence.  He made no mention of the fact that moments before the incident officer Wilson had helped save the life of an infant.  And finally, he made only bland equivocal calls for peace and non-violence.

It's a shame this isn't baseball, because on Ferguson alone I count three strikes.

(I put the images at the top of the page together because you will not see them in the pop media.  But they are real and should be part of the record.  What they mean is up to you to decide.  Of note: neither was raised by his father, and all seem to have issues with authority.)

Dictator

You probably don’t think of Barack Obama as a dictator.  He was democratically elected to be the president of a constitutional republic after all, so he cannot be a totalitarian dictator, right?   But consider this:  there are two ways a country can end up with a dictator:  a leader or faction can seize totalitarian power by force, or the people can grant totalitarian power to an individual or faction.  For all intents and purposes, Barack Obama has been granted totalitarian dictatorial powers by the latter route.  In fact, he is arguably the most powerful dictator the world has ever known. 

Think about it:  Barack Obama is commander-in-chief of the worlds most powerful military, and is uniquely able to wage war without congressional approval or opposition from pacifists; he has carte blanche to selectively enforce laws;  he has carte blanche to create and modify laws;  he dissolves borders unilaterally; he creates treaties unilaterally; he has weaponized every tentacle of the federal government to persecute his enemies; he is politically untouchable and unimpeachable;  he lies to the country with impunity; his deputies have been found in contempt of congress without repercussion; his policies have failed without repercussion.  And…his dictatorship has been granted almost complete support from the news media, academia, and pop culture.

The world has never seen a dictator with this much power and latitude.  

Net Neutrality Explained

You can't spell Democrat without the letters COMRADE

Behold as Jonathan Gruber, one of the key architects of Obamacare, explains the deceptions at the heart of the Affordable Care Act - deceptions which were necessary to overcome "the stupidity of the American voter".

This is not the first time Democrats have deceived the American people in order to pursue a major redistribution of wealth.  The last time something like this happened was in the 1990s when Democrats under Bill Clinton began something called the Affordable Housing Initiative (there's that word "affordable" again).  Deception was the key to the whole thing as mortgage credit was made available to those who could not afford mortgages, while the default risk was deceptively redistributed to taxpayers via Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FDIC, US Treasury, private banks, and other tentacles of the federal government.  The scheme eventually blew-up in 2008 and nearly took the global banking system down with it.  Oops.

Nevermind, the deceptions worked.  To this day if you ask the average voter what collapsed the financial system in 2008 they will dutifully recite that it was "greedy bankers, deregulation, and George W Bush".

One thing Democrats have learned from their comrades is the power of propaganda.  
     

An Election about American Exceptionalism

As I write this, the 2014 midterm election has yet to be decided, and though predictions are as thick as molasses in January, I trust that no outcome is assured.  But there is one thing I do know about this election and the direction of our country, it’s just another twist in a long road leading away from American exceptionalism.

We’ve heard a lot about “American exceptionalism” lately, but most of it misses the point.  Barack Obama was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism early in his presidency.  “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism”, he replied.    Subsequently he amended that view on numerous occasions, only to reveal that he continues to completely misunderstand the meaning of the term. 

Just last week, the president stood in front of a group of healthcare workers who had recently returned from Ebola stricken Africa.  “That’s American exceptionalism!”, the constitutional scholar informed us, which was ironic because many of the care givers present were members of a French organization known as Medecines Sans Frontieres, known here as Doctors Without Borders.  Oops, maybe he meant French exceptionalism.

No doubt, any person who goes to Africa to treat Ebola patients is an exceptional human being, but that has nothing to do with American exceptionalism.  American exceptionalism refers to our founding principles; never before in human history had a nation been formed with the central principle being the supremacy of individual rights along with deliberate limits on the powers of the state.  It made us an EXCEPTION among nations.  And it made us great. 

But those days are gone, and probably forever regardless of who controls the senate after this election.  We’ve been traveling down this road for a century, in fits and starts, progressing away from American exceptionalism and towards reversion to the mean.  This is the essence of progressivism: progressing towards average.  Americans see the rest of the world and want to emulate it because the grass is always greener, right?  Americans want "free" government healthcare like they have in other countries.  They want "free" secondary education like they have in other countries. They want a government that controls every aspect of the economy like they have in other countries.  They want a government that provides them with every want and need in life.  They want an all-powerful government, just like they have in other countries.  In other words, Americans have turned away from the idea of being exceptional; they want to be just like all the other un-exceptional nations.  They want to be average. 

No president has embodied this zeitgeist more than Barack Obama.  He has openly denigrated the concept of limited government as laid out in our constitution, calling it a “charter of negative liberties”.  Ummmm, yes it is from the perspective of the all-powerful state.  But from the perspective of the ultimate minority – the individual - our exceptional form of government, with its emphasis on individual rights, amounts to an emancipation proclamation.  This is the key to this election; will voters make the final turn towards a post-exceptional America, or will they once again turn, albeit temporarily, in the direction of American exceptionalism?

The Obama Ebola Strategy:

Seriously.  This is their position.  

Nero Only Fiddled Once

About that virus that ends in "a"...

Normally, when I borrow an idea I will credit the originator.  In this case the originator deleted his tweet, and so shall remain anonymous.  The original was somewhat more provocative than my version...  

Golf War II

Today we learned that President Obama has skipped about 60% if his daily intelligence briefings.  The Daily Caller goes on to compare Obama's golf time to his intelligence briefing time, and finds where the presidents true priorities lie.  All of which leads me to re-post this:

      

The Golf War

What to do about ISIS?

(Bumped for the president's speech tonight)

What should we do about ISIS?  (Or as the president prefers, ISIL, which uses the French diplo-speak term Levant for the mideast, and after all who amongst us doesn’t get a tingle up their leg from using French diplo-speak?)  Whatever you call it, we should do everything we can at the local level, here in the US, to prevent domestic attacks from these extremely dangerous jihadists.  Overseas, we should retreat from areas where ISIS may attack.  Beyond that we should probably just pray.

I realize this is a contrarian position.  There seems to be a bi-partisan consensus forming that the Obama administration must take bold and decisive action to fight ISIS “over there, so we don’t have to do it here”.  Never mind that this sentiment was once known as “The Bush Doctrine”, and that it’s repudiation is one of the core ideologies of our current president -- it only makes sense as national policy with a competent Commander in Chief.  Barack Hussein Obama is not and will never be that person. 

If you want to occupy the student union, Obama is your guy.  If you want to choose brackets for March Madness, Obama is your guy.  If you want to hear platitudes read off a teleprompter, Obama is your guy.   If you want to hear how this country is racist, guilty, flawed, corrupt, unfair, mean, nasty, sexist, and has a crappy constitution, Obama is your guy.  If you want to play golf, attend fundraisers, and do talk shows, Obama is your guy.  But if you want to communicate with deadly radical jihadists in the only language they understand, the language of force, I’d recommend anyone other than Barack Hussein Obama, and that includes my Labradoodle.  

So let’s prepare ourselves here and do everything we can to ensure the jihadists can't hurt us.   Beyond that, let's do nothing until we have a competent president.  Will there be chaos and mass casualties?  Perhaps.  But going to war with an incompetent commander would be like having open heart surgery performed by a comedian -- better to do nothing, pray, eat healthy, and get to the gym.

Obama Blames Bush. Again.

What to do about ISIS?

What should we do about ISIS?  (Or as the president prefers, ISIL, which uses the French diplo-speak term Levant for the mideast, and after all who amongst us doesn’t get a tingle up their leg from using French diplo-speak?)  Whatever you call it, we should do everything we can at the local level, here in the US, to prevent domestic attacks from these extremely dangerous jihadists.  Overseas, we should retreat from areas where ISIS may attack.  Beyond that we should probably pray.

I realize this is a contrarian position.  There seems to be a bi-partisan consensus forming that the Obama administration must take bold and decisive action to fight ISIS “over there, so we don’t have to do it here”.  Never mind that this sentiment was once known as “The Bush Doctrine”, and that it’s repudiation is one of the core ideologies of our current president -- it only makes sense as national policy with a competent Commander in Chief.  Barack Hussein Obama is not and will never be that person. 

If you want to occupy the student union, Obama is your guy.  If you want to choose brackets for March Madness, Obama is your guy.  If you want to hear platitudes read off a teleprompter, Obama is your guy.   If you want to hear how this country is racist, guilty, flawed, corrupt, unfair, mean, nasty, sexist, and has a crappy constitution, Obama is your guy.  If you want to play golf, attend fundraisers, and do talk shows, Obama is your guy.  But if you want to communicate with deadly radical jihadists in the only language they understand, the language of force, I’d recommend anyone other than Barack Hussein Obama, and that includes my Labradoodle.  

So let’s prepare ourselves here and do everything we can to ensure the jihadists can't hurt us.   Beyond that, let's do nothing until we have a competent president.  Will there be chaos and mass casualties?  Perhaps.  But going to war with an incompetent commander would be like having open heart surgery performed by a comedian -- better to do nothing, pray, eat healthy, and get to the gym.

America, We Have a Problem

I have no idea what happened in Ferguson, MO, and neither do you.  And we all agree any unnecessary death is a tragedy.  But we have a judicial system to deal with bad cops, if that turns out to be the case.  Rioting, looting, Molotov cocktails, death threats, and the like, should be singled-out as inexcusable no matter what the facts turn out to be.  Justice can only be served through our judicial system and that takes time, patience, civility, and wisdom.  Instead of making that case convincingly and emphatically, as a president should,  Barack Obama spoke to the nation in bland platitudes and equivocated.  

America, we have a problem.

(Update:  Obama spoke to the nation again yesterday (8/18) and again equivocated.  If he wanted to avoid further violence, looting, anger, and hate, he could have explained to those calling for "death to Darren Wilson!" that we have a judicial system and that the facts will come out as they do in every public case, especially when there are dozens of eye witnesses as there are in this case.  But this case should not be tried on TV, or in the streets,  or from the pulpit, or with molotov cocktails.  Instead he drew a moral equivalence between our judicial system and looting rioters.  Think about this America --  The President of the United States, for political reasons, does not want to prevent further violence, looting, anger, and hate.)

August Super Moon