Barack Obama: Dreamer or traitor?

Even as the truth about Obama becomes clearer, the dream trance becomes deeper.  A prescient look from "The Times" of three years remove.---rng

from thetimesonline.typepad.com
July 21, 2008

Posted by Daniel Finkelstein on July 21, 2008 at 12:01 PM

     Both The Independent's John Rentoul and my colleague Oliver Kamm are rolling out the red carpet for Barack Obama, as the Democrat begins the trip that will bring him to London.

     Why? Because both want him to succeed so that he can then fail. Here's the nub of Rentoul's Sunday column:

     There was a moment last month – it was when Susan Sarandon, the actress, said she might emigrate to Italy or Canada if McCain won – when it seemed essential to the sanity of America that Obama should lose.

     But, no, it is more important that the daydream should be broken. The idea that there is some kind of clean, different, painless, perfect alternative to politics as usual is a distraction from taking difficult, compromised decisions in an imperfect world. If Obama lost, too many people around the world could continue to believe that if only America got out of whatever it is in, everything would be better.

     And Oliver says that this is exactly what he has been thinking.

     I haven't.

     If Obama wins and fails to satisy his unrealistic supporters, Obama may be broken. The daydream will not be broken.

     Just as the failure of Ramsay MacDonald's government in 1931 was blamed on everything - treachery by Ramsey Mac, a banker's ramp, the King - except the intrinsic ridiculousness of Democratic Socialism; so disillusion with Obama will lead everything to be blamed - Obama's treachery or incompetence, his advisers, the military-industrial complex - except the naivety of the daydream.

     The daydream is very powerful, even if there was no such thing as cognitive dissonance.

     What were those words Shrummy wrote for Ted Kennedy?

     For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

     Shrummy was right. It won't.

to read original article and comments

Obama Completes His Trifecta

"No matter how paranoid you think you are, you're not nearly paranoid enough."

from "The X-Files."---rng

from American Thinker

February 24, 2011

By Richard N. Weltz

With a bold political announcement, President Barack Obama has completed the trifecta  -- de facto coups which bring into his White House the powers and functions of the other two branches, as outlined in our Constitution.

That document assigns the legislative function to Congress, but the Executive Branch blithely and routinely co-opts that power by run-arounds and choosing to enforce or not enforce duly passed laws of the Legislature. Notable  examples in the scant couple of years The One has been in office include: refusal to enforce voting laws against intimidation at the polls in Chicago, efforts to use the regulatory functions of the FPA to circumvent the specific legislation of Congress to ban cap-and-trade, refusal to enforce immigration laws, and attempts by the FCC to regulate matters banned from its jurisdiction by law.

We need not even mention the undemocratic parliamentary tactics and outright bribery used by Obama and his allies to ram through the unpopular and clearly unconstitutional ObamaCare bill -- without it even having been read by most Congress members.

On the judiciary side, we witness the executive ignoring a Federal Court ruling on ObamaCare's unconstitutionality, the refusal -- to the point where an order of compliance had to be issued from the bench -- to refrain from imposing an illegal moratorium on oil drilling; and, now the clearest and most blatant power grab of all. Obama has arrogated to himself, in the matter of DOMA, the power to declare that law unconstitutional and order his Justice Department not to contes tlawsuits challenging it.


to finish article

Obama’s FY 2012 Budget Is A Tool Of Class War

from vdare.com
February 17, 2011


By Paul Craig Roberts

Obama’s new budget is a continuation of Wall Street’s class war against the poor and middle class.  Wall Street wasn’t through with us when the banksters sold their fraudulent derivatives into our pension funds, wrecked Americans’ job prospects and retirement plans, secured a $700 billion bailout at taxpayers’ expense while foreclosing on the homes of millions of Americans, and loaded up the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet with several trillion dollars of junk financial paper in exchange for newly created money to shore up the banks’ balance sheets.  The effect of the Federal Reserve’s"quantitative easing" on inflation, interest rates, and the dollar’s foreign exchange value are yet to hit.  When they do, Americans will get a lesson in poverty.

Now the ruling oligarchies have struck again, this time through the federal budget. The U.S. government has a huge military/security budget.  It is as large as the budgets of the rest of the world combined. The Pentagon, CIA, and Homeland Security budgets account for the $1.1 trillion federal deficit that the Obama administration forecasts for fiscal year 2012. This massive deficit spending serves only one purpose--the enrichment of the private companies that serve the military/security complex. These companies, along with those on Wall Street, are who elect the U.S. government.

The U.S. has no enemies except those that the U.S. creates by bombing and invading other countries and by overthrowing foreign leaders and installing American puppets in their place.

China does not conduct naval exercises off the California coast, but the U.S. conducts war games in the China Sea off China’s coast. Russia does not mass troops on Europe’s borders, but the U.S. places missiles on Russia’s borders. The U.S. is determined to create as many enemies as possible in order to continue its bleeding of the American population to feed the ravenous military/security complex.

The U.S. government actually spends $56 billion a year, that is, $56,000 million,  in order that American air travelers can be porno-scanned and sexually groped so that firms represented by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff can make large profits selling the scanning equipment.

With a perpetual budget deficit driven by the military/security complex’s desire for profits, the real cause of America’s enormous budget deficit is off-limits for discussion.

The U.S. Secretary of War-Mongering, Robert Gates, declared: "We shrink from our global security responsibilities at our peril." The military brass warns of cutting any of the billions of aid to Israel and Egypt, two functionaries for its Middle East "policy."

But what are "our" global security responsibilities?  Where did they come from?  Why would America be at peril if America stopped bombing and invading other countries and interfering in their internal affairs?  The perils America faces are all self-created.

to continue article

Obama--avoid the "appearance" of sucess in Iraq

The quote below is from the body of the article, and highlights the usefulness of rereading old articles. (I found this on citizienwells.wordpress.com)  Obama has been wildly successful at not giving the "impression" of victory.  Since it involves the death of U.S. soldiers, is Obama guilty of murder as well as treason?---rng


"Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America. The reason? He fears that the perception of US victory there might revive the Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive" war - that is, removing a threat before it strikes at America."

Obama guilty of treason?, Stall Iraq withdrawal, Logan Act, Another illegal act, Kenya 2006, Obama demand, 

NY Post, September 15, 2008, 

OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS’ IRAQ WITHDRAWAL

Posted on September 15, 2008 by citizenwells| 3 Comments

Obama was criticized by the Kenyan Government for his 2006 visit
to Kenya when he campaigned for his cousin Raila Odinga and
insulted the government. Now we learn that when Obama met with
Iraqi leaders “He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,“, stated Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. The NY Post has a breaking news article on Obama’s meeting. Here are some exerpts from the article dated Monday, September 15, 2008:

“OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS’ IRAQ WITHDRAWAL“

“WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview”

to read full article

Did Big Sis’s Anti-Gun Policies Kill an ATF Agent?

from floydreports.com
By Doug Book, CoachIsRight.com
Feb. 14, 2011

On December 14th, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in an Arizona border shootout, presumably with Mexican illegals. Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano eulogized him a week later, saying “he put service before self, which is the mark of heroism.”  After the Arizona shootings, the Left gleefully blamed conservatives from Palin to Rush and pushed new gun legislation of all kinds. But although Big Sis herself flew to the scene of Terry’s death, took over the investigation, promised justice and quick action and later presented his eulogy, the legacy media and liberal politicos throughout the nation have fallen silent. No one has been blamed, no new gun legislation has been demanded.

In fact, the ATF-proposed Long Gun Registry for the border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas; supported by liberals everywhere; and to have gone into effect on January 5th has been suddenly discarded. The funding necessary to implement the program has beenrefused the ATF by the White House Budget Office.  So what happened? Why has this crisis been permitted to go to waste?

In 2005, the ATF created Project Gunrunner “to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico and to drug gangs.”  But there is one small problem. In spite of the contentions of Michael Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” and other gun control groups which claim that 90% of Mexican “crime guns” originate in the United States, there is no massive flow of firearms into Mexico from the U.S. So, “to justify the existence of the ATF’s Project Gunrunner…and thus the agency itself…the ATF stands accused of letting buyers purchase rifles in the US, knowing that the guns were headed for Mexican drug cartels. Worse, they may have literally walked the guns into Mexico themselves.”

to continue article

WikiLeaks cables: US agrees to tell Russia Britain's nuclear secrets

    When I first read this article, I thought it was a joke. It's been over a week and I still can't believe it. I will say this about our president: he getting better at the art of betrayal. He's now expanded beyond our borders and is betraying our allies as well. -----lee


The US secretly agreed to give the Russians sensitive information on Britain’s nuclear deterrent to persuade them to sign a key treaty, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.


By Matthew Moore, Gordon Rayner and Christopher Hope
9:25PM GMT
04 Feb 2011
 
     Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal signed by President Barack Obama next week.

     Defence analysts claim the agreement risks undermining Britain’s policy of refusing to confirm the exact size of its nuclear arsenal.

     The fact that the Americans used British nuclear secrets as a bargaining chip also sheds new light on the so-called “special relationship”, which is shown often to be a one-sided affair by US diplomatic communications obtained by the WikiLeaks website.
     Details of the behind-the-scenes talks are contained in more than 1,400 US embassy cables published to date by the Telegraph, including almost 800 sent from the London Embassy, which are published online today. The documents also show that:

• America spied on Foreign Office ministers by gathering gossip on their private lives and professional relationships.

• Intelligence-sharing arrangements with the US became strained after the controversy over Binyam Mohamed, the former Guantánamo Bay detainee who sued the Government over his alleged torture.


• David Miliband disowned the Duchess of York by saying she could not “be controlled” after she made an undercover TV documentary.

• Tens of millions of pounds of overseas aid was stolen and spent on plasma televisions and luxury goods by corrupt regimes.

     A series of classified messages sent to Washington by US negotiators show how information on Britain’s nuclear capability was crucial to securing Russia’s support for the “New START” deal.
Although the treaty was not supposed to have any impact on Britain, the leaked cables show that Russia used the talks to demand more information about the UK’s Trident missiles, which are manufactured and maintained in the US.
     Washington lobbied London in 2009 for permission to supply Moscow with detailed data about the performance of UK missiles. The UK refused, but the US agreed to hand over the serial numbers of Trident missiles it transfers to Britain.
  

For more .....

Treason: Obama Shuts Down Power Plants Coast to Coast

Are you being victimized by the rolling blackouts and brownouts and mysterious power shortages?  Are you cold this winter?  Don't worry.  This video by Alex Jones is guaranteed to have you hot under the collar in minutes.---rng

To see original video and other Alex Jones productions, click here.

Americans Are Oppressed, Too

from vdare.com
February 03, 2011

By Paul Craig Roberts 

Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists, as the greatest threat to the American public. Rogelio Serrato is the latest case to be in the news of an innocent person murdered by the police. Serrato was the wrong man, but the Monterey County, California, SWAT team killed the 31-year old father of four and left the family home a charred ruin.

The fact that SWAT teams often go to the wrong door shows the carelessness with which excessive force is used. In one instance the police even confused the town’s mayor with a drug dealer, broke into his home,shot dead the family’s pet dogs, and held the mayor and his wife and children at gun point. But most cases of police brutality never make the news.

Most who suffer abuse from the police don’t bother to complain. They know that to make an enemy of the police brings a lifetime of troubles. Those who do file complaints find that police departments tend to be self-protective and that the naive and gullible public tends to side with the police.

However, you can find plenty of examples of police brutality on YouTube, more than you can watch in a lifetime. I have just searched google for"YouTube police brutality" and the result is: "497,000 results." There’s everything from police shooting a guy in a wheelchair to body slamming a befuddled 89-year old great grandmother to tasering kids and mothers with small children. The fat goon cops love to beat up on women, kids, and old people.

The 497,000 google results may contain duplicates as more than one person might have posted a video of the same event, and the incidents occurred over more than one year. However, probably only a small percentage of incidents are captured on video by onlookers, and many incidents of police brutality have no witnesses. What the videos reveal is that a large percentage of police move with alacrity to assault the public. The number of incidences could be very high. One million annually would not be an exaggeration.

In contrast, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, in 2009 (the most recent year for which data is compiled), there were 806,000 aggravated assaults (not including assaults by police against the public) by criminals against the public, of which 216,814 were committed by hands and feet and not by weapons. (In the U.S. if you merely push a person or grab his arm, you have committed assault. "Freedom and democracy" America uses any excuse to multiply the number of felons.)

Considering the data, one might conclude that the police are a greater danger to the public than are criminals.

Indeed, the trauma from police assault can be worse than from assault by criminals. The public thinks the police are there to protect them. Thus, the emotional and psychological shock from assault by police is greater than the trauma from being mugged because you stupidly wandered into the wrong part of town.

Why are the police so aggressive toward the public?

In part because their ranks attract bullies, sociopaths and psychopaths. Even normal cops are proud of their authority and expect deference. Even cops who are not primed to be set off can turn nasty in a heartbeat.

In part because police are not accountable. The effort decades ago to have civilian police review boards was beaten back by "law and order"conservatives.

In part because the police have been militarized by the federal government, equipped with military weapons, and trained to view the public as the enemy.

In part because the Bush/Cheney/Obama regimes have made every American a suspect. The only civil liberty that has any force in the U.S. today is the law against racial discrimination. This law requires that every American citizen be treated as if he were a Muslim terrorist. The Transportation Security Administration rigorously enforces the refusal to discriminate between terrorist and citizen at airports and is now taking its gestapo violations of privacy into every form of travel and congregation: trucking, bus and train travel, sports events, and, without doubt, shopping centers and automobile traffic.

This despite the fact that there have been no terrorist incidents that could be used to justify such an expansive intrusion into privacy and freedom of movement.

The TSA has not caught a single terrorist. However, it has abused and inconvenienced several hundred thousand innocent American citizens.

The abuse happens, because people with authority are dying to use the authority. The absence of terrorists means that the TSA turns innocent Americans into terrorists. There have been so many absurd cases. One woman traveling with her ill and dying mother, who required special food, had contacted the TSA prior to the flight, explained the situation, and was given permission to take the special food onboard. But when she went through "security," the food was taken away, and when she protested she was arrested and hauled off, leaving the elderly mother in a wheelchair deserted.

Others have been arrested because a member of the household used a suitcase or carry bag to take guns and ammunition to the gun club or on a hunting trip and forgot to remove all the ammo, or the explosives test detected gunpowder residuals. Boy Scouts forgot to remove pocket knives from backpacks that they took on camping trips. Lactating mothers forced to give up breast milk. And so on.

These are the "great dangers" that the TSA protect the american sheeple from, and the sheeple submit, even servilely thanking their oppressors for protecting them.

Submission is what the government and the police want. Anyone who argues with TSA or the police will be abused. An American who stands up for his rights is likely to be beaten to a pulp. TSA"suspects" and will be held in indefinite detention.

to continue article...

Communist Control Act of 1954 --the fourth installment in a series on sedition

Do people have the freedom to end freedom?  If not, is denying the freedom to end freedom denying freedom?  No, it is protecting freedom.---rng

 I think Mr. van den Haap's remark about those who seek to destroy democracy by even peaceful means, do not deserve a place in our democracy is absolutely correct. -----lee

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

     The Communist Control Act was a piece of United States federal legislation, signed into law by Dwight Eisenhower on 24 August 1954, which outlawed the Communist Party of the United States and criminalized membership in, or support for, the Party.

Background

     Created during the period of the Second Red Scare (1946–1954), the Act was one of many bills drafted with the intention of protecting America from the potential threat posed by the international Communists.[1] During this time, some argued that “the pursuit of subversive aims even by peaceful means should [have been] outlawed.” [2] Thus, many opposed Communism because of its supposed “subversive aim” to undermine democracy. In the words of the prominent sociologist Ernest van den Haap, there was “no place in democracy for those who want[ed] to abolish [it] even with a peaceful vote.” [2]

The Act

     The Communist Control Act was originally proposed as an amendment to the International Security Act of 1950, which had sought to combat the spread of communism in labor unions.[1] Apart from its secondary focus which concentrated on the illegality of “communist front organizations” (i.e. labor unions),[3] the bill was drafted with the intention of tackling the root of the communist problem in America: the Communist Party. In its second section, the CCA of 1954 portrayed the American Communist Party as an “agency of a hostile foreign power.”[1] The Party was described as “an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the government,” and as a “clear, present, and continuing danger to the security of the United States.”[1] The Act made membership to the Communist Party a criminal act and stipulated that all Party members would be sanctioned with up to a $10,000 fine or imprisonment for five years or both. Additionally, according to the third section, the Communist Party would be deprived of “the rights, privileges, and immunities of a legal body.” [3]

     The International Security Act of 1950 had defined two types of “communist organizations.” Senator Butler later proposed a bill aimed at the removal of Communists from leadership positions in labor unions, adding a third class, that of “communist-infiltrated organizations.” Afterwards, the Democratic Senator Humphrey put forward a substitute to that bill with the intention of directly tackling the “root of evil,” the Communist Party members.[4] Through an amendment by Senator Daniel, both the Butler and Humphrey bills were merged into one, winning unanimous approval in the Senate from both Democrats and Republicans.

To continue ....

Smith Act --the third in a series on sedition

     Question: Was Obama ever registered under the Smith Act and should he be registered now? 

     -----lee

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

     The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act (18 U.S.C. § 2385) of 1940 is a United States federal statute that makes it a federal criminal offense for

     “ Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof - Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction. ”

     It also required all non-citizen adult residents to register with the government; within four months, 4,741,971 aliens had registered under the Act's provisions.

     The Act is best known for its use against political organizations and figures. Prosecutions continued until a series of United States Supreme Court decisions in 1957 threw out numerous convictions under the Smith Act as unconstitutional. The statute remains on the books, however.

     The Act was proposed by Congressman Howard W. Smith of Virginia, a Democrat and a leader of the "anti-labor" bloc of Congressmen.[1] It was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Smith Act trials 

     The first trial, in 1941, focused on Trotskyists; the second, in 1944, prosecuted alleged fascists and, beginning in 1949, leaders and members of the Communist Party USA were targeted.

     1941: Minneapolis offender - Communism on TrialThe first Smith Act Trial occurred in 1941 with the prosecution in Minneapolis of leaders of the communist Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Minneapolis including James P. Cannon, Carl Skoglund, Farrell Dobbs, Grace Carlson, Harry DeBoer, Max Geldman, Albert Goldman (who also acted as the defendants' lawyer during the trial), twelve other leaders of the Trotskyist SWP, and union activists involved with Local 544 of the Teamsters union in Minneapolis where the SWP had had a degree of influence since the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934. The SWP had advocated strikes and the continuation of labor union militancy during World War II under its Proletarian Military Policy and had some influence in Minneapolis due to its involvement with the Teamsters Union. The US Communist Party-- which, during the period in which the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was in force, had opposed American involvement in the war--had become an advocate of a no-strike pledge since the beginning of Nazi invasion of the USSR. An SWP member edited the Northwest Organizer, which was the weekly newspaper of the Minneapolis Teamsters, and the local remained a militant communist outpost in what was becoming an increasingly conservative national union under IBT leader Daniel J. Tobin.

To continue ...

Alien and Sedition Acts ---the second in a series on sedition

     Question: under how many acts does Obama qualify for deportation?

     ----lee

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

     The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams. Proponents claimed the acts were designed to protect the United States from alien citizens of enemy powers and to prevent seditious attacks from weakening the government. The Democratic-Republicans, like later historians, denounced them as being both unconstitutional and designed to stifle criticism of the administration, and as infringing on the right of the states to act in these areas. They became a major political issue in the elections of 1798 and 1800.

Acts

     There were actually four separate laws making up what is commonly referred to as the "Alien and Sedition Acts"

1.The Naturalization Act (officially An Act to Establish a Uniform Rule of Naturalization; ch. 54, 1 Stat. 566) extended the duration of residence required for aliens to become citizens of the United States from five years to fourteen years.

2.The Alien Friends Act (officially An Act Concerning Aliens; ch. 58, 1 Stat. 570) authorized the president to deport any resident alien considered "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States." It was activated June 25, 1798, with a two year expiration date.

3.The Alien Enemies Act (officially An Act Respecting Alien Enemies; ch. 66, 1 Stat. 577) authorized the president to apprehend and deport resident aliens if their home countries were at war with the United States of America. Enacted July 6, 1798, and providing no sunset provision, the act remains intact today as 50 U.S.C. § 21–24. At the time, war was considered likely between the U.S. and France.

4.The Sedition Act (officially An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States; ch. 74, 1 Stat. 596) made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government or its officials. It was enacted July 14, 1798, with an expiration date of March 3, 1801 (the day before Adams' presidential term was to end).

To continue ...