There are just too many instances of Obama doing and saying things no Christian would ever dream of doing or saying, but which would be normal utterences or behaviors for a Muslim. Supposedly he’s been a Christian for what – at least 15 years? – yet his public actions consistantly dispute such a notion.
He refused to speak in the presence of a cross [spelling corrected]; it had to be hidden beneath a cloth.
In another speech he sarcastically wondered hypothetically which religious lessone might be considered to be incorporated into governing, and very snarkily cited several Old Testament battle/brimstone verses. He was clearly amused by his ridicule of Jews’ and Christians’ holy book.
His wife does not travel with him when he goes to a Muslim country [Egypt, Turkey]
He doesn’t refere to Iran as “Iran”; it’s always “the Islamic Republic of Iran”
He doesn’t refer to the Koran as “the Koran”; it’s always “the Holy Koran”
In his Cairo speech he said “I have KNOWN Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first REVEALED”. You can observe a religion; to “know” it, you must belong to it. And ONLY a Muslim is going to describe Islam as having been “revealed”.
In the Cairo speech he also said, “…many Muslims recognize that Israel WILL NOT GO AWAY.” That terminology would only be used by someone with a hate-Israel mindset – not by a Christian. Loyalty to Israel is part of Christian life, and is non-negotiable. Genesis 12:3
Still Cairo: “American are ready to join with citizens & governments, community orgs, religious leaders, & businesses in Muslim communities around the world to help OUR PEOPLE pursue a better life.” “Our people” – he’s including himself – can only mean Muslims as most Americans already have the best life possible.
And he said, “The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind, and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.” His audience was Muslims, so they know “the rest of the story”, which is that this “all mankind” in the Koran refers to believing Muslims only. Jews and Christians are never referred to collectively with Muslims.
And, “…in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That is why I am committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.” Those pesky rules on charitable giving are in place to prevent Muslims’ ‘charitable giving’ money being used to fund terrorists. How unfair to Muslims!! Barry will fix it.
Cairo, again: “…Holy Land…a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.” Whoa! How come Barry the Christian is telling a story inventedd by the Muslims in an attempt to make out like Jesus and Mohammed were best buds? AQnd how come Barry the Christian is saying “peace be upon them”? For Muslims, some things are reflexive – like saying “peace be upon…” whenever they utter the name of Mohammed. Oooopsie!
Most telling is the New York Times article from several years ago, where the interviewer reported that Barry had recited the Muslim call to prayer in a “near-perfect” accent. That would be in Arabic. And that would be something Barry supposedly hadn’t heard since he’s left Indonesia 25 (appx) years before. But, but, but…he TOLD us he was never a Muslim. Oh, wait – that was before he told us he was a little bit Muslim, for a little bit. And he also told the Times’ reporter he considered the Muslim call to prayer one of the most beautiful sounds on earth.
It could be confusing – except that it’s obvious he’s been a Muslim all his life. And that he’s a liar of the first magnitude.
The Shoebat Foundation obtained this shocking audio recording of Rauf’s own voice boasting in Arabic that Obama’s historic Cairo speech was provided by the Imam and the Cordova Initiative in what the Imam called “The Blue Print” which he said was the solution to the Islamic-American divide. Rauf claimed Chapter 6 of the Imam’s work engineered by the Cordova Initiative was the construct for the entire speech:
“This is an example of the impact of our work in a positive way to be used by the President.”
I do not merely THINK that Obama is a Muslim, I am CERTAIN that he is. Islam is a political ideology, not a religion in the sense that most of us are familiar with. Islam is all about one’s outward actions, not about one’s personal, emotional or spiritual relationship with the Supreme Being. Anyone raised by a Muslim father is considered a Muslim by the Muslims, and that is what counts. In addition, there is no chance that he could have avoided making the Shahada at some point. He still frequents the company of Muslims. His occasional denial that he is a Muslim is nothing but taqiyya. He might be a fairly lax Muslim in terms of personal observance, but he is a Muslim nonetheless.
The only way I would consideer any former Muslim to be an ex-Muslim (i.e., an apostate from Islam) is if that person publicly renounces Islam, permanently eschews all further association with anybody associated with mosques, madrassahs, and the Muslim power structure, never again participates in any Muslim observance, and above all, never supports the Muslim agenda in any way, shape, or form, either at home or abroad. That means never taking the side of, or providing assistance to, any Muslim government or organization.
I make no claim that Obama is a particularly “devout” or “observant” Muslim – only that he is a very dangerous one.
…as I pointed out in my previous article, Another hidden zinger in Obamacare. But the inevitability of ‘death panels’ and ‘administrative euthanasia’ to ration government-controlled health care funds should have surprised nobody. It always happens with socialized medicine. It has already happened in the UK; just for starters, see This is your future under Obamacare.
With Obamacare, the government saves money every time it declares a drug ineffective…
Nick Allen in Los Angeles and Andrew Hough Published: 10:07PM BST 16 Aug 2010
A decision to rescind endorsement of the drug would reignite the highly charged debate over US health care reform and how much the state should spend on new and expensive treatments.
Avastin, the world’s best selling cancer drug, is primarily used to treat colon cancer and was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2008 for use on women with breast cancer that has spread.
It costs $8,000 (£5,000) a month and is given to about 17,500 women in the US a year. The drug was initially approved after a study found that, by preventing blood flow to tumours, it extended the amount of time until the disease worsened by more than five months. However, two new studies have shown that the drug may not even extend life by an extra month.
The FDA advisory panel has now voted 12-1 to drop the endorsement for breast cancer treatment. The panel unusually cited “effectiveness” grounds for the decision. But it has been claimed that “cost effectiveness” was the real reason ahead of reforms in which the government will extend health insurance to the poorest.
If the approval of the drug is revoked then US insurers would be likely to stop paying for Avastin.
Andy Griffith, the former TV Sheriff of Mayberry and guardian of small town America, is now the national spokesman for ObamaCare. More specifically, this venerable gentleman is the spokesman for the new Medicare. Apparently Griffith is under the naïve belief that ObamaCare is a genuinely good thing for seniors. As much as it pains me to say this, Griffith is dead wrong. ObamaCare is a fatal bargain for seniors, and all Americans.
Although media reports covering ObamaCare have centered mainly on the health insurance mandate and hidden tax increases, the real danger of ObamaCare lies in the official sanction of “mercy death” for America’s seniors as a means of reducing federal medical outlays. No, ObamaCare doesn’t say this outright. It simply limits hospital readmissions for those using Medicare, thereafter automatically committing said Medicare recipients to hospice facilities, called “community-based care.”
Obamacare opponents need to protest as vociferously as possible!
Why? Because, at least some of the time, it works.
Obama wasn’t the first corrupt Chicago politician to pay a price for tampering with America’s health care. Obama failed to learn from the example of Dan Rostenkowski. By their efforts to force Americans into socialized medicine, both have revealed their arrogant and self-serving natures, and both have permanently alienated many supporters that neither could afford to lose.
Angry protesters shouted down Democrats at public events from Texas to Pennsylvania over the weekend, leaving the party only one real hope for getting its message out over recess: a backlash. In Austin, Texas, Rep.Lloyd Doggettwas drowned out by a group of noisy, sign-waving demonstrators who shouted, “Just say no” as he tried to talk abouthealth care reform. … In Morrisville, Pa., Rep. Patrick Murphy was forced to scrap plans for a one-on-one meet-the-congressman session when people in the crowd started shouting. Murphy switched to a town hall format mid-event and even then had to ask the audience at times to “be respectful.” And at a healthcare event in Philadelphia, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius were repeatedly interrupted by booing and heckling. “We can shout at one another, or we can leave the stage,” Sebelius said at one point. “It’s up to you.”
The 1988 Catastrophic Act focused on providing protection against catastrophic medical expenses under Medicare. Specifically, the Act expanded the Medicare program to provide protection against catastrophic medical expenses and for the first time, provided coverage under the Medicare program for prescription drugs. To pay for these benefit expansions, a new supplemental premium tax on all persons eligible for Medicare was enacted.
Chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means Dan Rostenkowski lead the charge for the 1988 Act and paid a price. The Chicago Tribune from August 19, 1989 tells the story:
Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, one of the most powerful politicians in the United States, was booed and chased down a Chicago street Thursday morning by a group of senior citizens after he refused to talk with them about federal health insurance. Shouting “Coward,” “Recall” and “Impeach,” about 50 people followed the chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee up Milwaukee Avenue after he left a meeting in the auditorium of the Copernicus Center, 3106 N. Milwaukee Ave., in the heart of his 8th Congressional District on the city’s Northwest Side.
Eventually, the 6-foot-4-inch Rostenkowski cut through a gas station, broke into a sprint and escaped into his car, which minutes earlier had one of the elderly protesters, Leona Kozien, draped over the hood. Kozien, one of more than 100 senior citizens who attended the gathering, said she had hoped to talk to Rostenkowski, her congressman, at the meeting.
But Rostenkowski clearly did not want to talk with her, or any of the others who had come to tell their complaints about the high cost of federal catastrophic health insurance. “These people don’t understand what the government is trying to do for them,” the 61-year-old congressman complained as he tried to outpace his pursuers. [PB: I think they understood all too well.]
From: slvrfox55 Subject: WHY MICHELLE CAME HOME Date: August 11, 2010 2:16:17 PM EDT
Sheppard Smith, Fox News:
“If you check President Obama’s last trip over-seas, his wife left just after their visit to France…She has yet to accompany him to any Arab country. Think about it. Why is Michelle returning to the states when ‘official’ trips to foreign countries generally include the First Lady.”
Here’s one thought on the matter.
While in a Blockbuster renting videos I came across a video called “Obama”. There were two men standing next to me and we talked about President Obama. These guys were Arabs, so I asked them why they thought Michele Obama headed home following the President’s recent visit to France instead of traveling on to Saudi Arabia and Turkey with her husband. They told me she could not go to Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Iraq…I said “Why not,(?) Laura Bush went to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Dubai..” They said that Obama is a Muslim and therefore he is not allowed to bring his wife into countries that adhere to Sharia Law.
Two points of interest here:
I thought it interesting that two American Arabs at Blockbuster believe that our President is a Muslim, who follows a strict Islamic creed.
They also said that’s the reason he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia. It was a signal to the Muslim world, acknowledging his religion.
For further consideration, here is a response from Dr. Jim Murk, a Middle Eastern Scholar and expert on Islam. This is his explanation of what the Arab Americans were saying.
“An orthodox Muslim man would never take his wife on a politically oriented trip to any nation which practices Sharia law, particularly Saudi Arabia where the Wahhabi sect is dominant. This is true and it is why Obama left Michelle in Europe. She will stay home when he visits Arab countries. He knows Muslim protocol; this includes, bowing to the Saudi King. Obama is regarded as a Muslim in the Arab world, because he was born to a Muslim father; he acknowledged his Muslim faith with George Stephanopoulus. Note that he downplays his involvement with Christianity, by not publicly joining a Christian church in D.C. And occasionally attending the chapel for services at Camp David. He also played down the fact that America is a Christian country and said, unbelievably, that it was one of the largest Muslim nations in the world, which is nonsense.
He has publicly taken the side of the Palestinians in the conflict with Israel and he ignored the National Day of Prayer, something no other President has ever done. He is bad news! He conceals his true faith to the detriment of the American people.” — Jim Murk, Doctor of Philosophy in Middle Eastern Culture & Religion.
ACTIONS speak louder than words. Another interesting item regarding Sharia Law. Why has Barack Hussein Obama insisted that the U.S. Attorney General hold the trials of the 911 Muslim Terrorists in Civilian Courts as Common Criminals instead of as Terrorists who attacked the United States of America ? If the Muslim Terrorists are tried in Military Tribunals, convicted and sentenced to death, by LAW, Barack Hussein Obama, as President of the United States, would be required to sign their Death Warrants. He would not be required to sign the death warrants if they are sentenced to death by a Civilian Court…Recently, Muslim Jihadist, Army Major Hassan slaughtered non-Muslim, soldiers at Ft. Hood, Texas rather than go to Afghanistan and be a part of anything that could lead to the deaths of fellow Muslims. He stated that Muslims ‘could not and should not kill fellow Muslims.’ Is the motive for Barack Hussein Obama’s insistence on civilian trials, to make sure he doesn’t have to sign the death warrants for the Muslim Terrorists? Why would he, as President of the United States, not sign the death warrants for Muslim Terrorists who attacked the United States and murdered over 3,000 U. S. Citizens on 9/11? Could it be that he is FORBIDDEN by his RELIGION to authorize the execution of Muslims?
Think about that! Open your eyes, ears and mind to who the President is, how he behaves and what he is doing.
Guests at Minnesota’s oldest hotel could request a cuddly cat for the night
My husband and I stayed at the famous Anderson House Hotel in Wabasha, Minnesota a few years ago. The female tabby we chose spent most of the night cuddling with my husband. But I didn’t mind. The room was picturesque and the food at the restaurant was good.
Okay…I know it’s a family website. But it’s not what you think. So shame on you!
Actually, The Historic Anderson House in Wabasha, Minnesota is, according to innkeeper Teresa Smith, the state’s only legal “cat house.” And for a very good reason. The staff of the 151 year-old bed-and-breakfast includes five friendly felines who, upon request, will come to your room evenings, warm your bed, and keep you company. What’s more, the hotel provides a litter box, toys, and food with each “kitty-to-go.” Most guests reserve a cat with their room, Smith says, and many put their dibs in early to ensure their favorite will be available. Poor souls with allergies can request a no-cat room.
I recently looked up the hotel’s website and was disappointed to find that the domain name was being “parked.” It turns out that the famous landmark hotel that had been established in 1856, had failed to survive the Obama administration. At least all of the cats who once provided companship for the guests still have homes.
Last Update: March 23, 2009 – 7:19 PM
By: Kerry Westenberg
A voice-mail message at the storied hotel in Wabasha starts out with a promising welcome.
Then comes a sigh, and these words, “We are sad to say that due to the bad economics that are going on, the Historic Anderson House has had to close its doors.”
Until it stopped operating Thursday, the Anderson House had been the longest running inn in the state. It was built in 1856 when Wabasha was a bustling Mississippi River town.
…
The building is on the National Register of Historic Places, but may be more famous for its collection of cats that guests could bring into their rooms for the night.
…
Fancher said that the more than dozen cats that resided at the hotel have been adopted by friends and former employees.
From: Robert Bowen To:1389 Blog Mailbox Date: 7/27/2010, 8:17 PM EDT Subject: Amazing
I THINK IT IS REMARKABLE THAT WITHIN A WEEK OF TIGER WOODS CRASHING HIS ESCALADE, THE PRESS FOUND EVERY WOMAN WITH WHOM TIGER HAS HAD AN AFFAIR IN THE LAST FEW YEARS, WITH PHOTOS, TEXT MESSAGES, RECORDED PHONE CALLS, ETC. AND, THEY NOT ONLY KNOW THE CAUSE OF THE FAMILY FIGHT, BUT THEY EVEN KNOW IT WAS A WEDGE FROM HIS GOLF BAG THAT HIS WIFE USED TO BREAK OUT THE WINDOWS IN THE ESCALADE. NOT ONLY THAT, THEY KNOW WHICH WEDGE! AND EACH AND EVERY DAY, THEY GIVE AMERICA MORE UPDATES ON HIS SEX-REHAB STAY, HIS WIFE’S PLANS FOR DIVORCE, AND THE DATES AND TOURNAMENTS HE WILL PLAY IN. OBAMA HAS BEEN IN OFFICE FOR OVER A YEAR NOW, AND THIS SAME PRESS: STILL CANNOT FIND ANY OF HIS CHILDHOOD FRIENDS OR NEIGHBORS OR LOCATE ANY OF OBAMA’S COLLEGE PAPERS OR GRADES OR HOW HE PAID FOR A HARVARD EDUCATION OR WHICH COUNTRY ISSUED HIS VISA TO TRAVEL TO PAKISTAN IN THE 1980′S OR BARRY SOETORO OR EVEN MICHELLE OBAMA’S PRINCETON THESIS ON RACISM. THEY JUST CAN’T SEEM TO FIND THEM!!!YET THE PUBLIC STILL TRUSTS THAT SAME PRESS TO GIVE THEM THE WHOLE TRUTH! TRULY REMARKABLE!!!
Despite the use of block caps, this letter makes a valid point. Somehow, I don’t expect the media to come up with any definitive answers. All we ever get is the “same-old same-old” – the media, even the supposedly “conservative” media, slandering everyone who questions Obama’s eligibility for the Presidency as “birthers” or as part of the “lunatic fringe.” Any self-anointed media pundit who denies that this is a legitimate question is complicit in all of the harm that the Obama administration has done thus far and will do in the future.
A significant percentage of the American public continues to doubt the official version of Obama’s origins and his curriculum vitae – too many to write off as crazy. Every time another piece of evidence surfaces that casts doubt on Obama’s official bio, the mainstream media and even the quasi-conservative media downplay the issue, pretend to debunk it without actually debunking it, and ridicule anybody who expects a better answer than that.
Perhaps if Obama were executing the duties of the Presidency in conformance with the US Constitution and US law, and in the interests of America’s citizens and taxpayers, it would be much easier for people to believe that Obama is American-born. Instead, he has been governing like a third-world socialist dictator, like a wannabee Chavez or Mugabe writ large.
In Fundamentally Transforming the United States, Phyllis Schlafly explains how the Democrat party voter base is founded upon those who get (or hope to get) their livelihood from the federal government. It goes much further than Chicago-machine patronage politics writ large; the federal government is deliberately destroying the family structure so as to make people more dependent on the federal government and the Democrat party. Unmarried mothers are a key part of Obama’s voter base. Thus, it is in his interests to discourage men and women from getting and staying married.
How do the Democrats go about attacking the family structure? The attacks go much further than promoting gay marriage and abortion on demand, or free condoms and salacious “sex education” in the public schools. Detrimental as those things are, at least they are visible. It’s the progressives’ stealth jihad against the family that I’m talking about here.
Check out this hidden zinger in Obamacare:
Marriage Penalty in Health Care
A huge marriage penalty is hidden in Obama’s Health Control Law. This law is another federal program providing financial incentives to subsidize marriage avoidance and illegitimate offspring.
Even though all evidence shows that marriage is the best remedy for poverty, lack of health care, domestic violence, child abuse, and school dropouts, federal welfare programs continue to discriminate against marriage and instead give taxpayer handouts to those who reject marriage. This isn’t any accident; it is a central part of the Democrats’ political strategy that produced 70% of unmarried women voting for Obama for President in 2008.
Here is the approximate cost in the Health Control Law for an unmarried couple who each earn $25,000 a year (total: $50,000). When they both buy health insurance (which will be mandatory), the combined premiums they pay will be capped at $3,076 a year. But if the couple gets married and has the same combined income of $50,000, they will pay annual premiums up to a cap of $5,160 a year. That means they have to fork over a marriage penalty of $2,084.
The marriage penalty is the result of the fact that government subsidies for buying health insurance are pegged to the federal poverty guidelines. Couples that remain unmarried are rewarded with a separate health care subsidy for each income.
When the Wall Street Journal reporter quizzed the Democratic authors of the health care bill, they made it clear that this differential was deliberate. The staffer justified the discriminatory treatment because “you have to decide what your goals are.” Indeed, the Democrats have decided what their goals are. They know that 70% of unmarried women voted for Obama in 2008, and the Democrats plan to reward this group with health insurance subsidies.
The House staffer told the Wall Street Journal reporter that the Democrats can’t make the subsidies neutral towards marriage because that would give a traditional one-breadwinner married couple a more generous subsidy than a single parent at the same income level. Horrors! The Democrats certainly are not going to allow traditional marriage to be preferred over couples who just shack up!
Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously and accurately explained the disastrous results of welfare back in 1965. The welfare system created a matriarchy with millions of children lacking their father in the home. It’s no wonder illegitimate birthrates are soaring and unmarried mothers now give birth to 4 out of every 10 babies born in the United States.
Means-tested welfare programs already cost taxpayers close to $1 trillion a year (even more than national defense!), and Obamacare is projected to add another $2.5 trillion after all its provisions take effect. There’s no end in sight to the increasing costs of these entitlements. In one year, the Obama Administration will spend more taxpayers’ money on spreading the wealth to non-taxpayers than George W. Bush spent on the entire Iraq war.
Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a liberal firm that consults for clients such as Bill Clinton and John Kerry, admitted: “Unmarried women represent one of the most reliable Democratic cohorts in the electorate . . . leading the charge for fundamental change in health care.”
It used to be that a husband was responsible for the financial support of his wife and children, but the feminists’ agenda calls for replacing husbands with Big Brother Government. The feminists call their movement “women’s liberation,” and Obamacare is one more way to help them achieve their goal.
Feminists keep tightening their control over the social policies of the Democratic Party, and Obamacare will be his third payoff to the feminists. The first bill Obama signed as President, the LillyLedbetter Act, enables women to sue employers years many years after any alleged workplace discrimination (when no one is still alive to defend against allegations), and the second payoff was getting Obama to give the majority of taxpayer-paid Stimulus jobs to women even though men have suffered the big majority of job losses.
I am neither a lawyer nor an accountant nor a “policy wonk” (whatever that is supposed to be). Sorting through the huge pile of paperwork that makes up the Obamacare bill, or for that matter, the recent financial regulatory bill, and piecing together the hidden “zingers” that are poised to harm each sector of our economy and society, is beyond my capabilities. This is not a one-person job. I would like to urge everyone who is able to do so, to help complete this task by researching how those bills will affect their community and their sector of the economy, and submit that information to 2.0: The Blogmocracy.
The scavenger hunt is on, and the only prize is preserving your freedom.
Even the best-qualified, highest-skilled, and hardest-working Americans are up against it these days. Yes, even those Americans who still have jobs! We all know that the official unemployment statistics are vastly understated, in that they focus only on claims for unemployment compensation. The stats do not properly account for older workers who have taken early retirement after losing a job; young workers who cannot enter the labor force; “discouraged workers” who are still looking for work, but whose unemployment benefits are exhausted; disabled persons who could work to a limited extent, but who aren’t being hired; and American citizens who have had to travel overseas, often at great sacrifice and financial loss, to find work.
But perhaps the biggest of the dirty little secrets hidden by the official unemployment statistics is underemployment. I know about this from personal experience. Despite all of my qualifications, I have not been able to find full-time employment in over two years. The reason? With all of the hidden ramifications of Obamacare looming over everyone’s heads, along with the other past and future attacks on private enterprise, nobody wants to hire full-time people at all if they can help it. Certainly nobody wants to hire someone over 55 for a full-time job where the employer will be forced to provide overpriced health insurance or be fined for not providing it. Some people may call it age discrimination, but it’s the government that is causing it, not the prejudices of private employers.
There’s no need to take my word for any of this. Look at any job board or want-ad listing and notice the proliferation of part-time, temporary, and contract assignments, and the relative absence of full-time jobs with benefits. For example, a retail store that would normally hire two or three full-time employees will instead hire five part-time employees for 15 to 30 hours per week, at minimum wage, perhaps with commissions, but no benefits. A recent Gallup Poll also reveals large-scale underemployment in the form of part-time workers who want, but cannot get, full-time employment.
That conundrum, which reclaims center stage in Washington this week, is this: Why is unemployment so high?
The whodunit has flummoxed economists in both parties for a year. In 2009, as the new Obama administration grappled with the financial crisis, joblessness rose nearly two points beyond customary recession forecasts.
Part of the uncertainty concerns why. More consequential now, as the administration and Congress determine what to do, is whether the unemployment spike reflects a short-term or permanent shift in demand for workers.
But seriously…
I have studied economics and I know this for certain: All they have to do is repeal Obozocare, resume drilling, seal the borders, and end the H-1b program, and unemployment will drop three points within a month. I guarantee it!
But none of that will happen until we somehow muster the political will to force our government to do that. Or until enough States secede and decide to govern themselves in the interest of their own citizens.
One way or another, we need to free ourselves from the predatory liberal elites who flout the will of the people and who serve only their own interests and those of our foreign enemies.
The Obama administration, together with the liberal establishment in academia, the mainstream media, the NGOs, the foundations, the Ivy League, and the UN, all have reason to want unemployment to remain high. Why? Because, though it may make the Obama administration look incompetent in the short run, as it did with FDR, it will create more dependency on the government and increase centralized government power in the long run.
A Heritage Foundation report shows that thanks to multiple government programs, the proportion of Americans in some way dependent on government largess has suddenly jumped by 31.2% since 2001 after decades of much slower increases. Even in inflation-adjusted dollars, America now spends thirteen times more on public welfare than it did in 1965. Dependency has snowballed in health care, public welfare, and housing, and the upward trend seems likely to continue as Obama’s statist polices take hold and baby boomers retire. Indeed, the president plans to spend some $10.3 trillion in welfare over the next decades. In a nutshell, Uncle Sam is replacing the family, the church, private charities, and all other non-government sources of assistance, and this means regular jobs for the new caregivers. And it feels good to work for Uncle Sam: Benefits included, the average federal workers in 2008 earned double what those in the private sector took home. So it is hardly unexpected that since about January 2008, some 7.9 million private sectors jobs have disappeared, while 590,000 public sector jobs were created — and this trend seems to be multiplying. It’s a thoroughly modern ménage à trois of dependent citizens, well-paid government employees ministering to them, and harried taxpayers footing the bill.
Here’s what makes this “new wealth” so attractive: In today’s uncertain economy, it far outshines the old wealth of building things and selling them at a profit. For one, jobs ministering to the dependent are labor-intensive and immune to mechanization. Government jobs are also wonderfully secure. It is inconceivable, for example, that a counselor working with Vietnamese gangs in Los Angeles will be replaced by an industrial robot or that under-employed social workers will also be asked to direct rush hour traffic to trim labor costs. This is not the cost-cutting-obsessed airlines where passengers make their own reservations, print boarding passes, stow their own luggage, and bring their own food. Nor can these interventions be outsourced to foreign competition. Helping the less fortunate has a permanent “Made in USA” label attached — Toyota has no interest in tackling the pathologies of those living in Detroit.
The supply of these jobs-generating assets is also inexhaustible. America will never, never run out of this newly discovered “wealth.” We may deplete our oil and ravage our forests, but what are the odds of drug addicts, the mentally ill, young unwed mothers, and others needing intervention vanishing? Those mired in pathology are a truly renewable natural resource. Social problems do recede, but rest assured, replacements are easily found (e.g., sex addiction). In a pinch, just open the borders and receive a bountiful fresh supply. And compare the ease of setting up an in-school clinic to mentor anorexic, non-English-speaking adolescent girls with low self-esteem versus building a factory. The former is instantly shovel-ready.
In other words, if the government stops the private sector from offering relatively secure, remunerative, full-time employment to American citizens, that will eventually leave the government as the only source of good jobs on American soil. This is how the federal government creates a new class of Soviet-style apparatchiki. Of course, those jobs ONLY go to those who actively support the regime and do their part to enhance the careers of those already in power, while keeping everyone else down.
Now what?
Our goal is to re-empower ourselves and our families, and decentralize and take back control over everything that has been usurped from us. That means we need to go on the attack to discredit the liberal establishment and all its pomps and all its works, anywhere and everywhere it appears.
We must overcome not only economic underemployment, but the underemployment of the human spirit.
… Consider: The ruling class denies its opponents’ legitimacy. Seldom does a Democratic official or member of the ruling class speak on public affairs without reiterating the litany of his class’s claim to authority, contrasting it with opponents who are either uninformed, stupid, racist, shills for business, violent, fundamentalist, or all of the above. They do this in the hope that opponents, hearing no other characterizations of themselves and no authoritative voice discrediting the ruling class, will be dispirited. For the country class seriously to contend for self-governance, the political party that represents it will have to discredit not just such patent frauds as ethanol mandates, the pretense that taxes can control “climate change,” and the outrage of banning God from public life. More important, such a serious party would have to attack the ruling class’s fundamental claims to its superior intellect and morality in ways that dispirit the target and hearten one’s own. The Democrats having set the rules of modern politics, opponents who want electoral success are obliged to follow them.
Reducing the taxes that most Americans resent requires eliminating the network of subsidies to millions of other Americans that these taxes finance, and eliminating the jobs of government employees who administer them. Eliminating that network is practical, if at all, if done simultaneously, both because subsidies are morally wrong and economically counterproductive, and because the country cannot afford the practice in general. The electorate is likely to cut off millions of government clients, high and low, only if its choice is between no economic privilege for anyone and ratifying government’s role as the arbiter of all our fortunes. The same goes for government grants to and contracts with so-called nonprofit institutions or non-governmental organizations. The case against all arrangements by which the government favors some groups of citizens is easier to make than that against any such arrangement. Without too much fuss, a few obviously burdensome bureaucracies, like the Department of Education, can be eliminated, while money can be cut off to partisan enterprises such as the National Endowments and public broadcasting. That sort of thing is as necessary to the American body politic as a weight reduction program is essential to restoring the health of any human body degraded by obesity and lack of exercise. Yet shedding fat is the easy part. Restoring atrophied muscles is harder. Reenabling the body to do elementary tasks takes yet more concentration.
The grandparents of today’s Americans (132 million in 1940) had opportunities to serve on 117,000 school boards. To exercise responsibilities comparable to their grandparents’, today’s 310 million Americans would have radically to decentralize the mere 15,000 districts into which public school children are now concentrated. They would have to take responsibility for curriculum and administration away from credentialed experts, and they would have to explain why they know better. This would involve a level of political articulation of the body politic far beyond voting in elections every two years.
If self-governance means anything, it means that those who exercise government power must depend on elections. The shorter the electoral leash, the likelier an official to have his chain yanked by voters, the more truly republican the government is. Yet to subject the modern administrative state’s agencies to electoral control would require ordinary citizens to take an interest in any number of technical matters. Law can require environmental regulators or insurance commissioners, or judges or auditors to be elected. But only citizens’ discernment and vigilance could make these officials good. Only citizens’ understanding of and commitment to law can possibly reverse the patent disregard for the Constitution and statutes that has permeated American life. Unfortunately, it is easier for anyone who dislikes a court’s or an official’s unlawful act to counter it with another unlawful one than to draw all parties back to the foundation of truth.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. – Ephesians 6:12 (King James Version)
In General Casey obscures the pellucid air of Aspen, Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch gets it almost completely right. After roundly condemning George Casey for his dhimmitude under the guise of “diversity,” he proceeds to question America’s entire vision of what we are up against. And rightly so:
Former Vice President Cheney famously said that this would be a “Long War.”
And now General Casey, and those behind and above him, say that at the very least, this war in Afghanistan alone may go on for another five or ten years. And hearing this, we may ask ourselves where else will this war, fought this way, be taken – will it go to Somalia, or to Yemen? Will these be the next Stations of the National Cross we are collectively made to bear, because those who rule over us do not know, and do not want to know, and may even not know that they do not know, what is necessary if a sensible policy of managing the war of self-defense against all those who take the duty and doctrine of Jihad seriously can be constructed and applied?
That war of self-defense is not a “Long War.” It is not a war that might go on for “five” or maybe “ten” more years, in Afghanistan or anywhere else, and then be over with.. It is a permanent war, a war without end, because the doctrine of Jihad is a permanent, and central, not tangential, part of Islam. The duty to engage, directly or indirectly, in Jihad – which should not be thought of only as involving terrorism or other forms of violence – does not disappear. It did not disappear in the century-and-a-half, from roughly 1800 to 1950, when Muslims were so obviously weak that those who wanted to engage in Jihad simply could not. But now things have unalterably changed: the OPEC trillions (more than 13 trillion dollars since 1973 alone to the Muslim members of OPEC), with more piling up every year, and the millions of Muslims foolishly allowed in, through the casually criminal negligence of political and media elites, to the countries of Western Europe. All this, and then the exploitation of Western technology that is useful in the dissemination of the message of Islam, both to Muslims (some of whom might heretofore have been unaware of the full message of Islam, but can remain so now only with difficulty) and to non-Muslims who might be seduced by the siren-song of whatever melody (e.g., “social justice”) that Muslims conducting Da’wa might wish to underhum.
Far from being “realistic” in their supposedly “glum” assessments, Cheney with his “Long War” and General Casey with his “five or ten more years in Afghanistan” are actually misleading themselves, and us. For they are refusing to grasp the nature of the war. They are thinking in terms that do not make sense. To wit: It might take us “five or ten years” to stamp out Al Qaeda, and the Taliban, in both its Afghani and Pakistani versions, and then, supposedly, we will have our “victory,” we will have “won.” But no “victory” in the conventional sense is possible. And there is to be no “winning” but only, rather, the minimizing of the threat and the conceivable damage, from Muslims. Why? Because there is no sell-by date to the doctrine and duty of Jihad. It goes on forever. And when anyone tells you, with a sober mien that is supposed to convey the message that “I’m not naïve, I’m a grim realist, I know this is going to be a long hard slog and it might take five years, ten years, twenty years, in Af-Pak and the Horn of Africa,” you should not think to yourself that at long last someone has dared to tell the truth, someone in authority is leveling with you…
Fitzgerald then pokes some well-deserved holes into the unalloyed madness and idiocy that passes for long-term strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan:
And a second part of the Aspen speech by George Casey also merits attention: “Casey highlighted job, education and economic growth as essential to success in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
This is what we are so drearily familiar with, the idea that we should do with Muslim lands what we did with the countries of Western Europe after World War II with the Marshall Plan (indeed, Al-Jaafari and others in Iraq have more than once called for a “New Marshall Plan” for Iraq, in which the United States taxpayers foot the bill; “Marshall Plan” is a phrase strangely familiar to many Arabs and Muslims). We have an official unemployment rate of nearly 10% in this country (and more, if one counts those who have given up looking for work, and still more, if one counts all the greatly under-employed). We have a collapsing educational system. We do not have economic growth. But Casey, and those for whom Casey also speaks, thinks that Americans should pay for “jobs and education and economic growth” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Never mind that Iraq has the second or possibly first largest reserves of oil in the world, and thanks to the United States had its entire debt of nearly $100 billion cancelled by the Western nations (but notice that the Arab creditors did not cancel what was owed to them), and will be raking in hundreds of billions. Never mind that “education” may make an enemy more formidable, not less, and if “education” never questions the teachings of Islam, but merely makes Muslims more dangerous because better educated, why is this something we should encourage?
After facing all of this horror head-on, Fitzgerald reaches a conclusion that is far rosier than his own evidence warrants:
Is there time for Obama to begin to see things differently, and to get rid of the brennans and bring on board the ship of state, now a dangerously listing Narrenschiff or S. S. Naufragium, others, less ignorant and less self-deceived? Yes. There is time. But only just.
No, there is no time, simply because Obama is not one of us; he is among our enemies. He sympathizes with the jihadis and he will continue to do everything he can to ensure that they win.
