Socialist Obama: Could it be?

By Tom Graham - Part 1 During a recent “Meet the Press” the host, with feigned indignation, asked a Senator, “You’re not calling the President a socialist, are you?” Without waiting for a response, he repeated the question for emphasis. This performance highlights the hijacking of political semantics. “Socialist” was replaced by “Liberal” which, in turn, became a pejorative, and now “Progressive” is preferred, and used in titles of dozens of political and welfare advocacy groups. Constantly morphing ideas and permutations of definitions make it hard to compartmentalize politicians. An accepted basic view is that Socialism advocates state or collective ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods. That essential hallmark of freedom, private ownership of property, is prohibited. Note how the current abuses of eminent domain stretch the traditional definitions of public use.

Marx called Socialism a transition between capitalism and Communism. As any high school sophomore should be able to recite from Marx’s Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, “To each according to his needs; from each according to his ability.” An advocate of these ideas is indeed a Socialist. To quote National Socialist German Workers’ Party leader, Adolph Hitler, “The needs of society come before the individual’s needs.”

Before labeling Obama and his inventory of actions, we must also note the academic definition of Communism. “All economic activity is controlled by the state, dominated by a single political party.” Further: “A system based on holding all property in common, with actual ownership by the state.” Differences between the categories, reduced to simplest form: Socialism actually takes ownership while Communism totally controls enterprise, which ostensibly could remain private. This administration’s actions overlap both, with the common goal of doing away with Capitalism. Degrees of success are temporarily limited by public resistance. Constitutional protections are rejected as archaic annoyances.

Obama, equipped with glibness and arrogance, was dismissed as a buffoon by serious economists. His experience was largely limited to preaching Alinsky to ACORN volunteers. Without apologies, he surrounded himself with cabinet and advisor appointees, and a cadre of czars with no accountability, most of whom have serious ethical, legal and moral taints. The czars have no Congressional approval. Uniformly visible in that group is the disturbing tendency to demonize the concepts of private property ownership and free markets. The last 18 presidents averaged 46% of their advisers from the private sector. Obama has 8%.

As perennial presidential candidate Norman Thomas, and others, famously said, “The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation without knowing how it happened.”

Fabianism (strategy of establishing Socialism by gradual means), used with patience by subversive movements world-wide, is not in vogue with this administration.

To some degree or another, The administration has addressed all the elements of the Socialist or Communist state, with varying degrees and a common thread of shrinking Capitalism with alarming speed. The advice of Obama mouthpiece Rahm Emanuel is, “Never miss an opportunity to take advantage of a crisis.” Tactics of Chicago-style patronage, populism and corruption, unabashedly taken to the national level, have caught many flat-footed.

To correct what he blames his predecessor for, “long years of drift,” Obama is moving to control major industries in Communist fashion. What better start than the showpiece of American industry for a century, automobile manufacture? The President has no desire to own the auto companies, merely to control them. Perhaps he has read of the disastrous Soviet attempts at controlling manufacture with bureaucrats making all decisions.

Obama wants control while allowing experienced management to take care of the details. Bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler certainly were never meant to be loans, but rather a grab of equity. The action instantly took 78.3% of General Motors by the government, followed by a gift of 17.5% to the auto workers union. Bond value was whittled down to maybe 10% of GM equity. Investors without rational recognition of Communist control strategy held out hope for a rebound.

A sidebar of the auto industry takeover was the “Cash for Clunkers” fiasco which, at taxpayer expense, amounted to a marginal cost per car of $24,000. It had an effect of about 32 thousandths-of-one-percent CO2 reduction. It stimulated car purchases at the expense of future business a few months down the road. For example, by the end the year, Colorado new car registrations were 29.8% less than last year.

Christmas bomber: BHO still doesn't get it

When the President vows to “get to the bottom of all this and bring these violent extremists to justice”, he is telegraphing the following: 1. He is NOT connecting the violence to Islamic Jihad, which IS the main ideological threat to the United States. Islamic Jihadists generate markers that fit the facts on the ground. With these markers, we can proceed to watch the Mosques where Jihadist groups are formed, we can read their literature and understand their doctrine, we can listen to the Imams and anticipate their actions. But “violent extremists” generate nothing! How do you define one? You can’t! The media continues their apologist approach, describing the million and first “disturbed young man”, and of course Islam has nothing to do with it. They also strive for “balance” and are sure to mention “right wing extremists” in the same breath, even though there has been a weekly Islamic Jihad incident since July of this year, and nothing from “right wing extremists” since Oklahoma City.

2. The President, by avoiding the mention of Islam, is also letting us know he buys into the false narrative about Islam perpetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood and its front organizations such as CAIR, ISNA, MPAC, MAS, and all the rest. This false narrative would have us believe that Islam is the “religion of peace”, that all Muslims are moderate, and only a “fringe” are violent, owing to our policies. The reality is, Jihad is built into the faith. Jihad is the solemn duty of ALL believers. Jihad can be waged four ways: with the mouth, the pen, the money and the sword. Note that our misdirected “War on Terror” only deals with Jihad by the sword, leaving the other three modes unattended!

3. Also, to “bring violent extremists to justice” reveals a view that the war with Islamic Jihad is a police problem. A question: how to you deter suicide attacks with the threat of fines and imprisonment? The legal straitjacket we have put ourselves in is this: everything is legal until a crime has been committed. What happens when this “crime” is the detonation of nuclear weapons in a half dozen cities? Also, we see Jamaa’t al-Fukra training thousands of soldiers for Jihad in the United States. A steady stream of young men are going to the Middle East to the battlefields of jihad and are gaining combat experience. They are returning to the United States as seasoned combat veterans and trained killers. They are becoming the training cadre and the backbone of a Muslim Jihad Army being built before our eyes right here in the United States! And we are turning a legalistic blind eye lest we “offend the Muslims”?

“Zero Hour” arrives, (and this is their term, not mine), and these thousands of combatants rise up in armed insurrection, what will the government do then? Threaten to file suit? Threaten to pull their 503c status?

Get off the couch

This great country -- and I do mean EXCEPTIONAL -- is in the grips of a domestic enemy. Let's leave aside the politically correct platitudes and politeness for a moment and be honest. The left is the enemy to traditional American values of individual freedom, personal liberty and entrepreneurship.

They want to create a Nanny State, where the government runs your life. Health care is a big piece of this puzzle. Next will come the kind of car you drive, the light bulbs you use and which colleges you can go to. They want to tax and control every breath you take.

And make no mistake about it: the left is now firmly and fully in charge of the U.S. government. There is not a single (as in ONE) moderate or conservative Democrat in the U.S. Senate, and very few in the House. The White House is inhabited by Marxist revolutionaries -- and that includes the guy in the Oval Office.

We are being led by radicals.

That's the truth. And Democrats and Independents (and many so-called "Republicans") who voted for "Hope and Change" may feel hoodwinked, but the reality was there for all to see. The President of the United States is a Saul Alinksy operative with radical friends. That doesn't happen by accident.  Americans liked the cut of the guys jib and the fact that decades of race-guilt could be slayed in a single pull of the voting lever, and so the nation took a leap into the great unknown.

Off a precipice, and into an abyss.

And then insult got added to the injury by putting the likes of Al Franken (hey Minnesota -- politics is not really a JOKE!) in the Senate, giving the left a massive majority and the 60 votes needed to ram home big-time change on a purely partisan basis.

And that's really the main message here: this is a President and a Congress that thinks that a straight party-line vote is democracy in action. There was no pretense of bipartisan accommodation or compromise, only a "shove it down your throat" Chicago-style politics. The left is so certain they are right that they simply don't care what YOU think.

Nice, huh?

We are in for a very rough ride. But it isn't hopeless. We can take back the House in 2010 and put Nancy Pelosi out to pasture. We can defeat Harry Reid in Nevada and give him the good old Tom Daschle treatment.

We can change this in 11 months.

But to do so, you have to get OFF THE COUCH.

You have to start giving -- in money, time and energy -- to Republican candidates.  Money is the life's blood of politics, and to win in 2010, conservatives need to raise cash.   And if you can't contribute money, then volunteer for a candidate.  Stuff envelopes. Walk precincts. Host voter meetings in your living room.

We can't be passive. The enemy is organized, zealous and unbelievably vicious.  We must parry their every thrust.

We can't afford to lose this country for another generation. Please do WHATEVER you can. I am working with a Republican Congressional candidate here in Colorado -- Diggs Brown.  He's a very good man and a solid conservative.

Find someone -- anyone -- who you can support running for Congress in a swing district.  That's the way we can change this -- by putting solid conservatives in office in 2010.

We must do more than complain. We must ACT!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Let's make 2010 the year we TAKE BACK THIS GREAT COUNTRY!!

Do no harm?

The one health care lesson the Congress should have learned in crafting their "reform" bill is the most fundamental tenet of medicine: do no harm.Unfortunately, the Congress is now playing the role of Dr. Kervorkian. So destructive are its politically-motivated machinations that it is in the process of setting back American medicine -- and the economy -- a generation. It may never be fully resuscitated.

And now that Joe Lieberman has lost his minute of sanity -- opposing the public option and the expansion of Medicare -- it seems certain that this colossus of social engineering will get passed in the Senate. It will ultimately reach Obama's desk and will be signed in a lavish "historic" signing ceremony, where it will be hailed as a monumental accomplishment in "bending the health care cost curve" or some such nonsensical lie.

Believe me: the only thing this bill bends is the truth.

Here are some facts to chew on:

-- The true cost of this bill is $2.5 Trillion -- not the $900 billion the CBO will say it is. How does it get away with being three times more expensive than they say it will be? Because the ten year CBO "score" is based on gimmickry: it accounts for ten years of taxes to pay for it, but only provides SIX years of services. The true cost of the next ten years will be in the trillions of dollars as the program becomes "pay as you go" in year 11.

-- The foundation of this plan is to compel -- under the penalty of prison -- people to buy insurance. The 10% of the uninsured in this country who have decided not to spend their money on insurance -- either because they are young and healthy or have decided to take the risk -- will now not have that option. But don't worry -- in the spirit of income redistribution, "other people" will pay for much of it in the form of subsidies. Still, the reality is that the Congress is infusing government into the private lives of people in a way that they never had before. The Nanny state on steroids.

-- The taxes on this will be enormous -- and will hit everyone regardless of age or economic status. Remember that pledge Obama made to not raise taxes on anyone making "less than $250,000 per year"? Fuggedaboutit! Everyone's going to pay on this one -- from new taxes to higher insurance premiums. And that's for starters. When this starts to break the bank, taxes on everything will rise, and you can bet that there are plans for a Value Added Tax and other stealth taxes in the works. Your pocketbook just became a lot thinner!

-- This bill includes command and control facilities run by the Federal Government that will control the private insurance industry, putting new and pernicious controls on coverage and underwriting. At the end of this road, government will be controlling every aspect of the coverage provided, and will be in charge of determining insurance premium rates and coverage levels -- and will, when things get tight, become a "rationing board". It may not be "Death Panels" -- but it will be pretty darn close.

-- The new burden on states to expand Medicaid will create even bigger problems in already-strained state budgets -- amounting to a massive new unfunded mandate. States like California that are already $20 billion in the red will have to come up with another $3 billion or so to cover the new state portion of Medicaid expansion. This will result in -- you guessed it -- new taxes to cover the short-fall.

-- There is nothing in this bill that will restrain medical malpractice liability or the massive cost that the health care tort bar places on medicine. The trial lawyers have gotten the pass that they have bought and paid for. The Democrats in Congress are in their pockets, and thus an important element of truly containing health care costs has been left out of this "historic" reform bill.

-- This bill does nothing to fix the current government health care entitlement, Medicare, which is a giant ponzi scheme that will be insolvent within 1o years.

-- The net effect of this health care bill, the trillion dollar stimulus packages and the vast unfunded entitlements in the current fiscal 2010-2011 budget are a disaster in the making. As the Wall Street Journal points out today in its lead editorial, the Democrats are now pushing for a $2 trillion increase in the federal debt ceiling, so they can not be burdened by any vestige of fiscal restraint:

It's a sign of how deep the fiscal pathologies run in this Congress that $2 trillion will buy the federal government only one year before it has to seek another debt hike—conveniently timed to come after the midterm elections. Since Democrats began running Congress again in 2007, the federal debt limit has climbed by 39%. The new hike will lift the borrowing cap by another 15%.

Our concern is that the Administration and Congress view this debt as a way to force a permanently higher tax base for decades to come. The liberal grand strategy is to use their accidentally large majorities this year to pass new entitlements that start small but will explode in future years. U.S. creditors will then demand higher taxes—taking income taxes back to their pre-Reagan rates and adding a value-added tax too. This would expand federal spending as a share of GDP to as much as 30% from the pre-crisis 20%.

And of course this is the grand design -- to resurrect the pre-Reagan 70% marginal tax rates that will maximally punish wealth creation and success. Remember, this Congress is hostile to profit and capitalism, and would prefer to see a social democratic system ala Sweden, with 90% taxes and massive government programs to support every element of social interaction.

At the end of the day, all of this is being done on a purely partisan, party-line basis. There won't be one Republican voting for any of this. The 55 million people who voted for John McCain have been effectively told "screw you" by a president who campaigned as a "uniter" and as a "post-partisan" leader. What a joke. This is the most partisan president and most divided Congress in history. That this kind of vast social change can be foisted on the public -- 60% who now oppose it -- without a single bipartisan vote is an offense to republican democracy. When Medicare was passed it did so on a largely bipartisan basis -- 24 Republicans voted in favor in 1965. Today we have an even larger rework of the American economy and society and it will be a complete partisan putsch.

And that is typical of the left, which always thinks it knows best. The notion that conservatives might have some good ideas on health care has been scoffed at. Instead, you have a massive experiment in socialism being foisted on the American people by 60 left wing ideologues.

We are being sold down the river in a 2,000 page, $2.5 trillion boondoggle that no one understands -- but that we will be paying for in generations to come.

On Afghanistan, Obama bends the truth curve

Three agonizing months of deliberation, analysis and internal debate in the White House and this is the best they can do?Wow. Barack Obama has made his Afghanistan decision and it stinks of pure political posturing. He's attempting to split the political baby -- as he has done so often as both a candidate and as president -- by taking a half measure designed to satisfy everyone. The "hawks" on Afghanistan get 30,000 more troops -- the very low end of General McChrystal's request -- that shows he's serious about national security. But the doves get a huge concession, too -- a strict timetable of 18 months that guarantees withdrawal just in time for the President's 2012 reelection campaign.

Sound like a coincidence? Hardly. The President knows that he must have his left-wing base (like Code Pink and MoveOn.org) energized on his behalf -- and the sight of returning troops from Afghanistan will work wonders for his campaign. In attempting to satisfy the hawks and the doves he's actually satisfied nobody -- and put our mission in Afghanistan at grave risk.

This strikes me as the essence of moral bankruptcy -- to send our troops into battle with a timeline that is unworkable, and that has been set for purely political reasons. Though the President says that the 18 month timeline is designed to spur the Karzai government into action, anyone who understands the challenge of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan knows that this is just window dressing for a politically expedient decision. The President wants an out, and wants to signal clearly to his base that he doesn't believe in the "long war" thesis of the Bush Administration. His speech yesterday at West Point in announcing the Afghan surge was notable in its thinly veiled swipes at his predecessor, and Obama can't seem to bring himself to be the leader of all America. He is partisan to the core -- and his decision to "surge and then leave" smacks of partisan politics. It's truly difficult to stomach.

Even worse, Obama seems to be bent on repeating the worst mistakes of the Vietnam War, when President Lyndon Johnson embarked on a war that had no clear definition of victory, was waged in a tightly controlled manner on the basis of political considerations, and was based on the propping up of a government that never had the full support of the people. Vietnam destroyed the presidency of LBJ, and left a dark shadow on U.S. national security policy for a generation to come. Will Afghanistan end any better?

It is hard to envision success on the basis of the Obama decision. Experts in counterinsurgency are clear that it is a long war strategy, and that it requires a sustained commitment that can last a decade or more. Though it led to decisive gains quickly in Iraq, in Afghanistan the challenge is different -- and doesn't lend itself to an 18 month victory. Afghanistan is vast, remote, mountainous and tribal. Just 10 miles out of Kabul, the Karzai government controls almost nothing. Basing success on standing up the Afghan National Government is dubious at best. And I can't see how it can be done in 18 months -- with an enemy that understands how long they need to wait to see you off at the airport.

It's difficult not to be cynical looking at this decision. The commentary this morning reflects this cynicism, and will only deepen Obama's political trouble here at home. Germany's "Der Spiegel" has a great opinion piece today that is worth reading:

Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his Tuesday address announcing America's new strategy for Afghanistan. It seemed like a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric -- and left both dreamers and realists feeling distraught...

An additional 30,000 US soldiers are to march into Afghanistan -- and then they will march right back out again. America is going to war -- and from there it will continue ahead to peace. It was the speech of a Nobel War Prize laureate.

For each troop movement, Obama had a number to match. US strength in Afghanistan will be tripled relative to the Bush years, a fact that is sure to impress hawks in America. But just 18 months later, just in time for Obama's re-election campaign, the horror of war is to end and the draw down will begin. The doves of peace will be let free.

The speech continued in that vein. It was as though Obama had taken one of his old campaign speeches and merged it with a text from the library of ex-President George W. Bush. Extremists kill in the name of Islam, he said, before adding that it is one of the "world's great religions." He promised that responsibility for the country's security would soon be transferred to the government of President Hamid Karzai -- a government which he said was "corrupt." The Taliban is dangerous and growing stronger. But "America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars," he added.

It was a dizzying combination of surge and withdrawal, of marching to and fro. The fast pace was reminiscent of plays about the French revolution: Troops enter from the right to loud cannon fire and then they exit to the left. And at the end, the dead are left on stage.

But in this case, the public was more disturbed than entertained. Indeed, one could see the phenomenon in a number of places in recent weeks: Obama's magic no longer works. The allure of his words has grown weaker.

It is not he himself who has changed, but rather the benchmark used to evaluate him. For a president, the unit of measurement is real life. A leader is seen by citizens through the prism of their lives -- their job, their household budget, where they live and suffer. And, in the case of the war on terror, where they sometimes die.

Political dreams and yearnings for the future belong elsewhere. That was where the political charmer Obama was able to successfully capture the imaginations of millions of voters. It is a place where campaigners -- particularly those with a talent for oration -- are fond of taking refuge. It is also where Obama set up his campaign headquarters, in an enormous tent called "Hope."

In his speech on America's new Afghanistan strategy, Obama tried to speak to both places. It was two speeches in one. That is why it felt so false. Both dreamers and realists were left feeling distraught.

The American president doesn't need any opponents at the moment. He's already got himself.

Obama is out of his depth. He's a president in permanent campaign mode, who thinks that promising everything to everyone still works. What he seems to forget is that he is president now, and his decisions have consequences, and that won't be forgotten by the time he gets to his next campaign stop.

Our leader is an empty suit, without the character to be honest with the American people. His decision is based on a lie -- that we can have quick success in Afghanistan -- and he seems to think that we won't notice if it doesn't turn out ok. His health care reform is similarly based on lies and half-truths. Its as if he thinks he can bend the truth curve, and that down will suddenly be up and up will suddenly be down.

Actually, he's right about that: Obama was suddenly up, and now he's suddenly down. And it will be a long, long fall.