Free Republic

Each of us makes mistakes. Sometimes they're little mistakes, but sometimes they're very big. Sometimes they have serious consequences. Sometimes they are open and obvious for the whole world to see. Or, to paraphrase the Apostle Paul, "Some electorates' sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some electorates they follow after." So it is with the unfortunate decision by the American electorate to choose Barack Obama as our President. This is proving to have been — as many a Cassandra had warned — a big mistake. It's more than just a bit iffy whether the nation's collective wallet...

Harder to buy US Treasuries Created: 2009-12-18 0:13:35 Author:Zhou Xin and Jason Subler IT is getting harder for governments to buy United States Treasuries because the US's shrinking current-account gap is reducing supply of dollars overseas, a Chinese central bank official said yesterday. The comments by Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, referred to the overall situation globally, not specifically to China, the biggest foreign holder of US government bonds. Chinese officials generally are very careful about commenting on the dollar and Treasuries, given that so much of its US$2.3 trillion reserves are tied to their...

From the very beginning of the Obama presidency Democrats have been acting like kids in a candy store - doubling down on the TARP bailout and the $787 billion stimulus/slush fund. The most recent 1.1 trillion spending bill and now the health care bill which, with a little accounting sleight-of-hand, comes in at under one trillion, the Democrats are spending like there are no more tomorrows. What will be the results of all of this out of control spending? The consequences will be many but one of the most surprising results could be the end of liberalism. At least that's...

Watching the Senate press last week toward passage of President Obama's universal health care, my Red Alert is forced to contemplate whether a socialist agenda is intending to bankrupt the United States with trillion-dollar social-welfare programs there is no way the country will ever be able to afford. In "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," I clearly established that Barack Obama is trained in the Saul Alinsky "Rules for Radicals" methodology of lying to voters to disguise a true intent to transfer wealth from the "haves" to the "have nots." But as we watch President Obama...

Current law prohibits the community organization ACORN and its associated groups from receiving any federal funds from any federal law currently on the books. However, the Eric Holder Justice Department has interpreted the law as allowing federal agencies to pay ACORN for "binding contractual obligations" made before the current prohibition was enacted. This questionable interpretation may go a long way toward neutralizing ACORN's funding prohibition. The actual ban reads as follows: "None of the funds made available from this joint resolution or any other prior Act may be provided to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), or...

Using borrowed money for a band-aid bailout of the economy should seem backwards to most people. However, it likely is a planned strategy to promote radical change. Those naively believing that President Obama is simply rewarding his far-left base, and will then move to the political center, must wise up. The assumption that Obama will need the nation to prosper in order to protect the 2010 mid-term election incorrectly assumes that he esteems free market capitalism. He does not. Rather than win through superior ideas and policies, the Democrat plan for success in the mid-term elections is to win by...

It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact. In September of last year, American Thinker published my article, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Part of a series, it connected then presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government. Since then the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck...

It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The economic programs and policies currently in place are truly astounding. I don't think I have ever seen a more harmful economic environment for the country. While some of these programs started with Bush, the Obama Administration has advanced them to insane levels. Logic, economics, common sense and history must be defied to believe a recovery is possible in this environment. The nation's standard of living will be substantially lowered unless changes in policies are forthcoming. To understand why this economy cannot recover under these policies, it is necessary to differentiate between the macroeconomic and microeconomic approach. Arguably, macroeconomics is...

It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact. In September of last year, American Thinker published my article, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Part of a series, it connected then presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government. Since then the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck...

Is THIS where Obama is taking the country? ( snip ) The strategy Cloward and Piven’s article is focused on forcing the Democratic Party, which in 1966 controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, to take federal action to help the poor. They argued that full enrollment of those eligible for wellfare “would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments” that would “deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the white working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening...

ASTONISHING: COULD SENATOR OBAMA'S DIRE WARNINGS BE PRESIDENT'S PLAN http://www.breitbart.tv/could-sen-obamas-dire-warnings-be-president-obamas-current-plan/

Expanding the Community Reinvestment Act As we try to shake off the financial crisis, here's a bright idea. Take a law that has led to the writing of an enormous amount of bad mortgages and expand it. Then take enforcement away from bank examiners and give it to housing activists. Sound like a poisonous cocktail? Well, it is what the Obama administration and Democrats are currently stirring up on Capitol Hill. The White House and Congress want to expand a 30-year-old law--the Community Reinvestment Act--that helped to fuel the mortgage meltdown. What the CRA does, in effect, is compel banks...

As we try to shake off the financial crisis, here's a bright idea. Take a law that has led to the writing of an enormous amount of bad mortgages and expand it. Then take enforcement away from bank examiners and give it to housing activists. Sound like a poisonous cocktail? Well, it is what the Obama administration and Democrats are currently stirring up on Capitol Hill.

October 20, 2008 By Kyle-Anne Shiver "A People's Organization is dedicated to an eternal war...A war is not an intellectual debate, and in the war against social evils there are no rules of fair play." - Saul Alinsky; Reveille for Radicals; p. 133 Rules? What rules? Laws? What laws? Clearly, Alinsky's acolytes take him at his word. When one is fighting a war "against social evils," one is above the law. Rules and laws are for the other people. I'm stunned by the irony here. For the past eight years, Americans have been bombarded nearly nonstop by cries of "Bush...

ACORN, the new tip of the Cloward-Piven spear In 1970, one of George Wiley's protégés, Wade Rathke -- like Bill Ayers, a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) -- was sent to found the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now. While NWRO had made a good start, it alone couldn't accomplish the Cloward-Piven goals. Rathke's group broadened the offensive to include a wide array of low income "rights." Shortly thereafter they changed "Arkansas" to "Association of" and ACORN went nationwide. Today ACORN is involved in a wide array of activities, including housing, voting rights, illegal immigration...

President Obama stood in New York at "high noon" and talked about how we must have "change", and that we have "helped homeowners avoid foreclosures", how "we must put in place reforms" and that "we have helped come back from the brink" and "an irresponsible period of crisis." In fact, in his speech he said: So I want to urge you to demonstrate that you take this obligation to heart. To put greater effort into helping families who need their mortgages modified under my administration's homeownership plan. To help small business owners who desperately need loans and who are bearing...

Will President Obama "seize power overnight" in a move to consolidate White House control of the U.S. government? That's the fear of Fox News anchor Glenn Beck who discussed the issue at length today with another broadcasting powerhouse, radio's Rush Limbaugh. "I fear this government, this administration has so much framework already prepared, that they will seize power overnight before anybody even gives it a second thought," Beck said. His comment came as he was analyzing the changing nature of the media since Obama's election, citing the administration's close ties with the NBC network, owned by corporate giant General Electric:...

I'm in NY where I'll be headed to the Fox studios in a few hours to tape the "Glenn Beck Show." The segment I'm doing will be aired Thursday as part of a week-long series called "The New Republic," which is Glenn's look at the radical agendas of the Obama Administration. Last night, with Pat Caddell as his guest, Glenn made the connection between the trillion-dollar defcits Obama is deliberately running up and the Cloward-Piven strategy devised by two Columbia radicals to bankrupt the welfare system in New York in order to create a crisis that would generate radical change....

Reasonable questions for unreasonable timesMonday, August 24, 2009 - 18:05 ET Am I hateful if I ask: - Our unfunded liability for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is close to $100 trillion. Is there any way to pay for these programs without bankrupting America? - We are in so much debt, why spend more borrowed money on cap-and-trade and healthcare programs before we stop the flow of red-ink? - The stimulus package funneled billions of dollars to ACORN. How does giving billions of dollars to ACORN stimulate the economy? - If it was so important for congress to pass...

As with the Democrat takeover of Congress in 2006, it was a disaster of epic proportions. With one shocking, enormous, blatantly partisan, self-serving and destructive proposal following on the heels of another, the sheer enormity of their power grab defies description. But as each new proposal moves forward, the hand of the Crisis Strategy becomes clear. If there were ever any doubt that Barack Obama personifies the Crisis Strategy, it should long since have been removed for anyone with a mind. Since so many Americans seem to have lost theirs, I address this to the rest of you. For with...

These are perilous times. Last November’s election of Barack Obama and a veto-proof majority of Democrats in both houses allowed a virulent criminal cabal to capture our nation’s seat of power. As with the Democrat takeover of Congress in 2006, it was a disaster of epic proportions. With one shocking, enormous, blatantly partisan, self-serving and destructive proposal following on the heels of another, the sheer enormity of their power grab defies description. But as each new proposal moves forward, the hand of the Crisis Strategy becomes clear. If there was ever any doubt that Barack Obama personifies the Crisis Strategy,...

ABC reports that experts who track hate groups across the U.S. are growing increasingly concerned over violent rhetoric targeted at President Obama, especially as the debate over health care intensifies and a pattern of threats emerges. New polls meanwhile show President Obama’s popularity has sunk to record lows. Is this an alarm bell for the possibility that a manufactured crisis is being prepared to reinvigorate support behind the government’s stalling socialist agenda? As far back as March controversial talk show host Michael Savage predicted that a “Reichstag fire-like event” would be concocted to reinvigorate support behind Obama but that was...

Barack Obama is proving himself to be a destructive nihilist with capitalism, the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the traditional American experience in his crosshairs. In today's American culture there are other sorts of nihilism. Pop culture nihilists much more common, comprising a virtual demographic segment of self-satisfied know-nothings. Destructive nihilists are rarer, but more fearsome. They believe western civilization is so corrupt that wholesale destruction is the only solution. Nihilism, while easily abused by the casual thinker, is actually both political, and in a thunderingly empty way, deeply spiritual. Russian author Ivan Turgenev's character Bazarov explains in Fathers...

Trying to excite the crowd last night at a fundraiser for Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds in Tysons Corner, VA. Barry H. Obama made un-presidential remarks to which the crowd went crazy and no doubt had a collective Obamagasm. Blaming President Bush for the weak economy, Obama tried to make it appear that it was Bush and the Republican that spent us into this recession. While we had a hand in that, the bulk of the blame goes to the Democrats that have controlled congress and the spending since 2007. Obama said, ‘I don’t want the folks who created the...

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” 
 -Thomas Jefferson In the 1960s, two Alinsky grads and Columbia sociologists, Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, devised a scheme to bring about the downfall of capitalism by overloading government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands. Drawing inspiration from the highly successful Watts riots in 1965, they wrote that the current welfare system provided a social safety net, which only doused the fires of rebellion. Cloward and Piven believed that the poor would only advance if the rest of society...

The Democrat Party, using networks of local blogger operatives, successfully bogged down the Alaska state government with a series of bogus "ethics" complaints and FOI requests, all designed to destroy former Gov. Sarah Palin. Now the party of Hope and Change is using the same strategy in Minnesota: "Three Minnesota bloggers filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Michele Bachmann this week, claiming the Republican violated House franking rules in an email to constituents."Sound familiar? In the early stages of using the strategy, Obama's goon squads seem to be concentrating on on states that have attractive, conservative women of faith in...

The results of the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll are a major warning sign for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress. On some key issues, the gains that Democrats had made on Republicans in the last couple of years have disappeared, and the GOP has begun to reassert itself. In other policy areas, traditional Democratic leads are diminishing. The results are found in the answers to the Journal's questions about whether respondents believe the Democratic or Republican party would do a better job of handling a particular issue. In the past, Democrats have usually led in areas like health...

The Cloward/Piven Strategy is another method employed by the radical Left to create and manage crisis. This strategy explains Rahm Emanuel's ominous statement, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." The Cloward/Piven Strategy is named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Their goal is to overthrow capitalism by overwhelming the government bureaucracy with entitlement demands. The created crisis provides the impetus to bring about radical political change. According to Discover the Networks.org: Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the...

"...Copeland, 53, says he has a 20-year work history in Missoula that includes managing programs, running political campaigns and washing cars. He worked as a personal secretary to actress Andie MacDowell when she lived in the Missoula area."

Republican Charles Baker says Gov. Deval Patrick and Beacon Hill Democrats have "turned a crisis into a calamity" and made the Massachusetts economy "a wreck" with excessive government spending and an unwise tax increase. In a video to supporters unveiled today, the former Harvard Pilgrim Health Care president says he has twice engineered economic turnarounds.

  THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary_______________________________________________________________FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                      July 22, 2009 Excerpts of the President's Opening Remarks at Tonight's News Conference-As Prepared for Delivery- That is why I’ve said that even as we rescue this economy from a full-blown crisis, we must rebuild it stronger than before.  And health insurance reform is central to that effort.This is not just about the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance.  Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage if they become too sick, or lose their job, or change their job. ...

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) founder Wade Rathke wants to use the Internet to overthrow the capitalist system. He said so in his new book, Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families, in which he serves up some community organizing war stories, and offers his thoughts on the future of organizing. Rathke, a pioneer of the so-called welfare rights movement that aims to get Americans on welfare, devotes an entire chapter of his book to what he calls "The 'Maximum Eligible Participation' Solution." It is a strategy for orchestrated crisis that savvy leftist groups across...

Any reasonably intelligent person understands that if the demand for a product increases then (all things being equal, as the economist would say) its price will rise. The same holds in the case of borrowing, except for congressional Democrats. These people seem to think that economics laws are a vicious Republican plot. Poll figures are now showing that the American public is growing alarmed by the Democrats' utterly reckless fiscal policy. Unfortunately, few people understand just how grave the danger really is

Sarah Palin entered into the arena of national politics today, with an op-ed in the Washington Post. Choosing energy, a topic that she is extremely familiar with, Sarah crafted a detailed and convincing argument against the cap-and-tax bill. Palin makes several points that absolutely decimate the argument in favor of cap-and-trade: * The bill includes $4.8 billion in unemployment relief over eight years for those who lose their jobs because of a drying-up energy sector — a direct counter to the administration claim that the bill is a job creator. * The bill is regressive, in that it will hit...

In a stunning report (pdf) released yesterday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the current financial crisis was traced back to government intervention in the U.S. housing market.  Yes, you read that right.   The report issued by the Republican minority didn’t disclose the names of the culprit individuals, but it sure pointed a lot of fingers at organizations, politicians, lobbyists and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. According to the report, government intervention “created ‘affordable’ but dangerous lending policies which encouraged lower down payments, looser underwriting standards and higher leverage.  Finally, government intervention created a nexus of vested interests...

Joe Biden's weekend statement that the administration misread how bad the economy really was, had been celebrated as just another gaffe by Obama's "Minister of LOL." Fact is that it was not another screw-up by Joe six-pack, it was part of a clearly orchestrated campaign by the Obama administration to make an excuse for the failure of the President's economic policy of high taxes, government control of major industry, and over spending. The basic contention of the administration is that the estimates were made before they knew the economy was contracting at a annual rate of 6%. Not only were...

What happened to Sarah Palin is a political game changer on the national level. It also may be a preview of what every American may face in a few years. The 18 ethics charges filed since she rose to prominence in Republican circles might be the first time the left has successfully used the Cloward-Piven Strategy to stop an individual politician on the national level. For those who do not know, the strategy was developed in the late 1960s by two sociologists at Columbia. In a nutshell it seeks to "hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy...

Well now. Our economy is really lunging forward, isn’t it? What a ride! Are you holding on? We’re billions of dollars further in debt (trillions?) and the economy is still stagnant. TARP, the stimulus bill, massive debts our children and grandchildren will have to pay .. and what has this all brought us? Banks aren’t lending, businesses aren’t hiring – let along expanding – and consumers aren’t buying. Oh, to be sure, the malls are crowded. Turn up the thermostats and see how long that lasts. Those aren’t shoppers, they’re just your neighbors trying to stay cool while watching the...

Most people knew that Vice President Joe Biden would be one of President Obama’s major handicaps throughout his inexperienced administration’s first years. It’s not because Joe is incompetent, in fact he was selected to be the wise old man of experience. No, it’s because Joe has trouble shading the truth. He is no good at spin. He is a blunt, ‘tell it as it is’ type.

Empowerment by manufactured crisis Posted: July 02, 2009 1:00 am Eastern © 2009 Back in January 1973, National Lampoon sported a brilliant cover – probably the satirical magazine's most famous. A cute black and white dog was the visual element, staring ominously at a revolver pointing at his head. The headline read: "If you don't buy this magazine, we'll kill this dog." People bought the magazine in droves, not because they believed the editors of National Lampoon were really going to kill the dog, but because it was so funny. It strikes me that Barack Obama and the Democrat-dominated Congress...

GOP says even bloodhounds can't find stimulus jobs Posted: 01:32 PM ET From CNN Congressional Producer Deirdre Walsh WASHINGTON (CNN) – On the day the June jobs report showed the U.S. labor market shedding 467,000 jobs, House Republicans released a tongue-in-cheek Web video featuring a bloodhound named "Ellie Mae" sniffing out stimulus jobs. Narrated by Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, the clip shows the bloodhound "on the money trail" visiting AIG's headquarters in New York City and projects in Wisconsin and North Carolina supported by federal stimulus dollars. It was modeled on a campaign commercial run by the current Senate...

Duxbury, Mass. -- As millions of Americans struggle through the painful rebuilding of a crippled economy, a Massachusetts builder has published a book that promises to help average citizens understand just how the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression happened. Doug Friesen, a Duxbury-based home designer and builder, decided to write a book on the roots of the economic meltdown as a way of productively channeling his anger and frustration over the financial crisis. Titled "The Age of Entitlement: How Greed and Arrogance Got Us Here," the 180-page book begins with a layman's analysis of the monetary system before...

Barack Obama isn’t just following Saul Alinsky. He’s using the Cloward-Piven strategy to purposely destroy America by flooding welfare rolls. Before Saul Alinsky’s “Rule for Radicals” Obama’s evil plan to bring down America was laid out by two anti American creeps from Columbia University. Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven’s recommendations, made in 1966, are driving Obama’s headlong charge to drag America into one crisis after another. What Cloward-Piven calls for is the purposeful bankrupting of America by flooding our city and state welfare rolls. Once this purposeful bankruptcy is accomplished the ensuing chaos will provide the opportunity for herding...

In a recent thread I wrote of the systematic assault upon the American institutions, culture, and ideals, by the Obama administration and its myrmidons. Examples were given of attacks upon the financial system, heavy industry, the health care system, the free election process, and the judiciary. One reason given as to *why* this was being done was a reference to a cartoon version of Hayek's classic The Road to Serfdom. In this piece, I look at why the current wave of assaults which are necessary to bring us to the brink of serfdom, and compare the elements of the work...

(CNSNews.com) - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-run mortgage giants, are absent from the Obama administration’s sweeping new financial regulations, despite the fundamental role played by both organizations in the financial system’s collapse. Testifying before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that the administration’s new regulations were only meant to address the most fundamental issues of the recession. “We considered a full range of options and decided that now is the time to pursue the essential reforms,” Geithner said. “Those that address the core causes of the current crisis, and that will help...

This current financial crisis had many causes. It had its roots in the global imbalance in saving and consumption, in the widespread use of poorly understood financial instruments, in shortsightedness and excessive leverage at financial institutions. But it was also the product of basic failures in financial supervision and regulation. Our framework for financial regulation is riddled with gaps, weaknesses and jurisdictional overlaps, and suffers from an outdated conception of financial risk. In recent years, the pace of innovation in the financial sector has outstripped the pace of regulatory modernization, leaving entire markets and market participants largely unregulated. That is...

As the President jamming throw his agenda, his party is beginning to lose public confidence on key issues. Porkulus, the Omnibus bill, along with the auto bailouts, and a look ahead to programs such as cap and trade has made the Republican party the most trustworthy when it comes to the economy. It even gets better than that Rasmussen asks the public about ten Issues, Republicans are more trusted in Six, Democrats in three and one (abortion) was a tie. The GOP made impressive gains in trust to handle the economy, ethics and corruption,national security. It seems as if the...

Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on six out of 10 key issues, including the top issue of the economy. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% now trust the GOP more to handle economic issues, while 39% trust Democrats more. This is the first time in over two years of polling that the GOP has held the advantage on this issue. The parties were close in May, with the Democrats holding a modest 44% to 43% edge. The latest survey was taken just after General Motors announced it was going into bankruptcy as part of...