Not at all surprising:

The Gallup Poll reports that a majority of Democrats, 53%, have a “positive” image of socialism, which includes independents who lean toward the blue party.

Only 17 percent of Republican and GOP-leaners hold socialism in a positive light. In total, more than one-third of Americans, 36%, have a positive image of socialism.

Also viewing socialism positively: 61% of liberals, 39% of moderates and 20% of conservatives.

So, perhaps Obama’s plan is really just a Bolshevik plot, even though he denies it?

No, its not President Obama. Yet.

…Harried by recession and sliding popularity, Mr. Chávez on Friday weakened the bolivar to 4.3 per dollar from 2.15 in a bid to shore up government finances, which have been hit by weaker oil prices, and to stimulate economic growth ahead of key elections….

Yet another socialist. Yet another hero to the American left. Yet another corrupt, crooked tyrant. Its a story which has been told far too many times. You’d think, after a while, our domestic leftists would figure it out, but they never do. While Chavez has put in some cosmetic protections for the poor, the plain fact of the matter is that he’s just stolen half the wealth of Venezuela’s poor – the people he, and other socialists, always claim to be for. And, as with all other socialist regimes, it is the poor who fare worst.

The trouble for us is that the Federal Reserve has been printing money like mad and using it to buy bonds and worthless assets from banks. Each dollar the Fed creates out of thin air is essentially a dollar stolen from the people – because each dollar in hand (and representing actual work to earn it) now becomes worth that much less. Will this kick in to massive inflation? So far, no – but only because the world is in such a deep economic down spin that the inflationary effects have been muted. But our money has been stolen, and eventually it’ll have to balance out somewhere.

For nearly a century now we’ve tried to funny-money and usury our way to riches. Well, it hasn’t worked. All its done is pile up a mountain of debt, benefited financial sharks (like the left’s other hero, George Soros) and screwed the average person out of their wealth. Its time to bring an end to this – before Obama takes a cue from Chavez, and picks our pockets.

Click on the above photo, taken in May, 2008, in Bozeman, MT, to view it in full size. Pay special attention to Obama’s book of choice in the inset. The name of the book is “The Post-American World,” by Fareed Zakaria, who also happens to be the editor for Newsweek International (of the fatal Koran Flushing Non-Incident Incident fame).

And what, pray tell, is the subject matter of the “Post American World?” In part,

Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the “rise of the rest”—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil,…

Is Obama’s choice of reading material in the picture any coincidence, given that Barack Obama is the only president in my lifetime who has never spoken of America’s greatness, nor advanced the ideal of American exceptionalism? Is the choice any coincidence, given that Barack Hussein Obama chose for two decades to attend a church whose pastor regularly engaged in anti-American rants?

Is his reading material of choice truly a mere happenstance, given that in his lifetime Obama chose to associate himself with terrorists who loved their country so much they decided it was best to literally blow up its institutions with impunity?

Most important of all, is our President’s choice of reading material in the photo really any coincidence, in light of Barack Obama’s perpetual apology tours, a domestic spending agenda and a “climate change” agenda that will surely bankrupt us for generations to come, not to mention the recently proposed windfall transfer of wealth to third world tinhorn dictatorships? For that matter, Obama’s feckless, half-hearted attempts to de-nuclearize Tehran speaks volumes, especially given his declaration in his much vaunted Cairo speech that “…No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.”

In summary, one could certainly argue that the President’s agenda, nay, his very upbringing, breadth of experience and associations have rendered him a tailor-made instrument that would bring Zakaria’s vision of a “Post American World” into reality. As a matter of fact, given his choice of reading material, it’s not that much of a stretch to infer that it is Obama’s very intention that Zakaria’s vision of a neutered, feckless America, no longer a leader on the world stage, is nothing less than a foregone conclusion.

Some of my liberal counterparts had near apoplectic responses to John Hinderacker’s article entitled, “Why does he hate us?” In it, Hinderacker highlights his compatriot Paul Mirengoff’s article in The Examiner, an excerpt of which follows:

In the area of foreign and national security policy, however, Obama can operate largely unchecked. And a weak, guilt-ridden policy toward our foreign adversaries is almost certain to produce grave consequences.

To some extent, we have seen this act before. The damage of just four years of Jimmy Carter’s America-effacing presidency included Soviet expansion, communist inroads in Latin America, the replacement of a friendly government with a virulently anti-American theocracy in Iran, and a prolonged hostage crisis that came to symbolize the new American impotence.

But although Carter was ambivalent about America, his efforts to promote democracy abroad showed that he thought we had something to offer t[he] world. Obama will not grant America even that.

Emulating Carter the ex-president, rather than President Carter, Obama has shown essentially no interest in human rights or democracy promotion. His belated support of the Iranian protesters following this summer’s election could hardly have been more lukewarm.

It seems that, in Obama’s view, all we have to offer the world is our non-interference in its affairs, except perhaps when it comes to bullying our allies.

This led one of my liberal acquaintances to retort:

Sorry, but the “facts” in the article simply do not lead to the conclusion that constitutes the assertion in the title.

So, Does Barack Hussein Obama really hate America? Consider the following:

In his formative years, young Barry Soetoro hung out with the likes of Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, who loved America so much they decided to bomb the living crap out of it.

The guy sat in a church for 20 years listening to a guy screaming “G-d Dmn America!”

Barack Hussein Obama, himself, in his own words, said the Constitution was a flawed document because it did nothing to ’spread the wealth.’

Obama never misses an opportunity to apologize for what he feels to be American ‘arrogance.’ (yet he himself, is the paragon of arrogance).

Rather than speaking of American greatness, Obama speaks only of its perceived flaws. Rather than build on the principles that made America great, he seems to feel that it is his job to single-handedly correct what he believes to be over two centuries of wrong-minded policies, and to turn America and its founding principles on its head as a means to weaken and humble our nation in the process.

Barack Hussein Obama never speaks of a strong America; he never speaks of America being a leader for freedom; but instead he speaks of America as a nation in need of neutering, one to be relegated to be on equal footing (or lower) with even the most rogue of nations. Rather than the Monroe, Truman, JFK, Reagan, and Bush doctrines, which each recognized the greatness of America and sought to protect and champion the cause of freedom and liberty around the globe, Obama’s is the new doctrine of “American moral relativism;” rather than being clothed in Old Glory, we are now bathed in sackcloths and ashes, being beaten down and forced to atone for what in Obama’s mind are past and unforgivable wrongs. Rather than stand up to tyrants, dictators, and monarchs, he bows before them in supplication. Rather than representing America in strength, he cowers in his own fecklessness.

In an effort to hasten his remaking of America, Obama has even cheapened the very structure, fidelity and integrity of governance, appointing a wide variety of tax scofflaws, avowed communists, and innumerable unelected, unaccountable ‘czars‘ to carry out his policies.

I would therefore submit that, taking into account how he chose to spend his developing years and as is certainly evident in the intent of and in the way he conducts policy, it most veritably can be inferred that Barack Obama isn’t necessarily a fan of that for which America has traditionally stood.

In fact, to make the inference that Barack Hussein Obama loves America and all for which it has traditionally stood is certainly more of a stretch of inference than is its corollary.

Camille Paglia is no conservative. In fact, Camille Paglia is no Republican. Camille Paglia is, in fact, a feminist Democrat. That’s why I found her latest piece at Salon.com so fascinating.

When I first saw the article, entitled, “Pelosi’s Victory for Women,” I thought, “Okay, here we go–another Nancy Pelosi mindless puff piece.”

The first two paragraphs certainly did not disappoint:

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi scored a giant gain for feminism last weekend. In shoving her controversy-plagued healthcare reform bill to victory by a paper-thin margin, she conclusively demonstrated that a woman can be just as gritty, ruthless and arm-twisting in pursuing her agenda as anyone in the long line of fabled male speakers before her. Even a basic feminist shibboleth like abortion rights became just another card for Pelosi to deal and swap.

It was a stunningly impressive recovery for someone who seemed to be coming apart at the seams last summer, when a sputtering, rattled Pelosi struggled to deal with the nationwide insurgency of town hall protesters — reputable, concerned citizens whom she outrageously tried to tar as Nazis. Whether or not her bill survives in the Senate is immaterial: Pelosi’s hard-won, trench-warfare win sets a new standard for U.S. women politicians and is certainly well beyond anything the posturing but ineffectual Hillary Clinton has ever achieved.

Yep, just a run of the mill flaming lib, blindly singing the phrases of another flaming lib.

But the following paragraph (and thereafter) blindsided my expectations:

As for the actual content of the House healthcare bill, horrors! Where to begin? That there are serious deficiencies and injustices in the U.S. healthcare system has been obvious for decades. To bring the poor and vulnerable into the fold has been a high ideal and an urgent goal for most Democrats. But this rigid, intrusive and grotesquely expensive bill is a nightmare. Holy Hygeia, why can’t my fellow Democrats see that the creation of another huge, inefficient federal bureaucracy would slow and disrupt the delivery of basic healthcare and subject us all to a labyrinthine mass of incompetent, unaccountable petty dictators? Massively expanding the number of healthcare consumers without making due provision for the production of more healthcare providers means that we’re hurtling toward a staggering logjam of de facto rationing. Steel yourself for the deafening screams from the careerist professional class of limousine liberals when they get stranded for hours in the jammed, jostling anterooms of doctors’ offices. They’ll probably try to hire Caribbean nannies as ringers to do the waiting for them.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

If a feminist liberal democrat like Camille Paglia gets it, are the rest of her liberal cohorts that brain-dead? Or are they merely blinded and necromanced by the promise of a socialist utopia, even if they have to destroy an entire nation to achieve it?

When I heard this on the radio this morning, I was stunned:

Jeremiah Wright. William Ayers. Van Jones. Where does the rogues’ gallery of Barack Obama’s radical friends end? These people are not liberals. They are not “progressives.” They are radicals who hate America and in many cases have advocated or even perpetrated violence in an effort to destroy it.

Thanks to Glenn Beck, the American public has now been introduced to yet another radical member of Obama’s inner circle: Anita Dunn, Interim White House Communications Director, former top advisor to Obama’s political campaign, and wife of Obama’s personal lawyer, Robert Bauer.

In a speech before high school students last June, Dunn spoke passionately about her two favorite political philosophers, “the two people I turn to most” for answers to important questions like “how to do things that have never been done before.” Who are these paragons? One was Mother Teresa. Dunn didn’t have much to say about her. Most of her enthusiasm was lavished upon her other favorite fount of political wisdom: Mao Tse-Tung.

I’ve heard the audio (which you can listen to in the link). Its not out of context, its not something which can be explained away – the lady thinks that Mao is an admirable person we can learn from. She made the remarks at a high school graduation – which means she thinks that the kiddies should emulate the Great Helmsman.

As I said, I was stunned – Mao was a psychopath; a murderer; a thug. In plain fact, the man was no different from Stalin, Lening, Pol Pot, Hitler or any one of a score of the 21st century’s bloodthirsty tyrants. His name is an abomination and should be held up as precisely what no person should follow – but here comes Anita Dunn, Obamaniac, lauding him for his persistence. That he was persisting in evil designs doesn’t register.

In my view, the reason Dunn says what she says – and why other liberals have, at times, praised other tyrants – is because they earnestly wish they had that sort of power. There is really no other explanation possible, outside of sheer stupidity, for praising men who were simply vile in their actions. And now, with Dunn, we can see that the infiltration of such junior-league communist apparatchiks in to government is not just some isolated instances – there are too many such cases under Obama. This amounts to a take over of the reigns of power by people who hate democracy…who think it a hindrance in the pursuit of their ideals.

UPDATE: Roger Kimball gives a run-down on damage control:

Damage control time!

–She didn’t mean it.
–She was only quoting a Republican operative.
–Fox News is mean to Democrats.
–Glenn Beck is an extremist.
–The President is trying to clean up a big mess left by George Bush.
–Can’t we just change the subject?

When Glenn Beck aired a video of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn praising Chairman Mao — one of her “two favorite political philosophers” — in front of an audience of high school students, the conservative blogosphere lit up like a non-denominational sustainably harvested Kwanza tree.

And the left swung in to action – and Kimball seems to not have been hit with the “she was just being ironic” meme some lefty’s have tried here.

She did mean it, she wasn’t quoting a Republican, how Fox News views Democrats is irrelevant, Glenn Beck’s views are also irrelevant, President Bush didn’t bring the Maoists in to the White House and no, we’re not going to change the subject.

Connie Hair on Human Events reports:

The bill certified for “reconciliation” is the Ways & Means version of H.R. 3200 that was passed out of committee before the August break, and before it was read aloud at town hall meetings across the country and blasted by voters across the country.

It contains all of the horrors previously exposed: federal funding of abortion, coverage for illegal aliens, comparative effectiveness, healthcare rationing, deep cuts to Medicare. Everything the American people overwhelmingly reject.

No amendments were allowed at the hearing and no debate. Rangel told Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the committee, that he would not have preferred to do it this way, but leadership — i.e., Speaker Pelosi — forced his hand.

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. By so obviously thwarting the will of a vast majority of the American people, It would appear to that the democrats are quite willing to relegate themselves into a permanent minority, if it will advance America’s downward spiral into the bowels of their great socialist experiment.

They want it that bad.

The ends, after all, justify the means.

(via KOSMOSNET)

They don’t understand it:

Europe’s Socialists Suffering Even in Downturn

A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse.

Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.

This is hilarious! “Even in Downturn” – because, you know, its natural for people to look to the Nanny State when things get rough…heck, all the liberals the NY Times knows do it, right? “Challenges to capitalism”…hey, I know there are capitalists hip deep in the poop on this, but what crashed wasn’t capitalism – it was the abuse of capital by Big Corporation and Big Government. “Have not found a compelling response”…because the whole set up was theirs to begin with. This is the ultimate failure of socialism – even the soft, cuddly socialism of the Euro-left.

Topping off the joke is that the NY Times is serious – they really are flabbergasted at this turn of events. And there is in this the dark hint: What if the American people turn out to be just like this? What if, even during a down turn caused by the failure of capitalism, they move away from Obama and his Democrats? The thought is making them break out in a cold sweat.

Nothing but fun from now until November of 2010, boys and girls…

I knew that there was something #fishy about this AP Story regarding the Portsmouth, NH Obamacare rally, featuring the Chief Snake Oil Salesman, himself:

The White House had been ready for an unruly reception from opponents of overhauling health care. There was no sign of that, perhaps because of the makeup of the day’s crowd or out of traditional deference for the president.

Obama’s push came amid a string of disruptive health care town halls nationwide that have overshadowed his message and threatened to derail support in Congress. Indeed, Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter faced hostile questions, taunts and jeers earlier Tuesday as he tried to explain his positions at a town hall in Lebanon, Pa. Voter fears of a government takeover of health care were on stark display.

Some lawmakers, holding forums during Congress’ August recess, have gone so far as to replace public forums with teleconferences or step up security to keep protesters at bay.

But the Democratic president faced no outbursts.

The encounter was so friendly, in fact, that by the end Obama was even asking for skeptical questioners to come forward — to no avail.

Of course, to the clueless AP state-run media, there was nothing #fishy about this happenstance. But to anyone with a google search engine, the reasons were obvious:

On Monday dozens of workers — including White House staffers — spent hours setting up the high school auditorium for Obama’s forum, which is only open to those members of the public who secured tickets. Organizers would not disclose how many tickets were issued.

John Moran, 71, of Nottingham was among the many who went to the school to pick up tickets for an event marking Obama’s first trip to the Granite State since he took office in January.

Moran, a Democrat, said he is a strong Obama supporter who was thrilled when he got a call notifying him that he would have two tickets for today’s Town Hall forum.

The Nottingham resident said his wife — who will also be attending — was even more excited with the chance to see Obama live.

“She is really tickled. You should have seen her … she was jumping up and down,” Moran said.

Moran said he has a couple questions in mind if he is called on at the forum with one of them being how the president intends to get health insurance companies to work with him to reform health care.

He said he hopes Obama’s plan will push for a more proactive approach to healthy living that involves coverage for preventive health care like screening and exercise.

Kathleen O’Brien, 64, and Jean Sanders, 66, both of Atkinson, said they will be sitting on stage for the event as they worked on Obama’s campaign beginning in 2007.

On Monday they both went to the high school to pick up tickets and their excitement was more than evident.

“He is as good as everyone says he is. The last person I worked this hard for was Robert Kennedy,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien wore an American flag-style scarf around her neck and a lanyard carrying several Obama pins.

She said she’s read most of Obama’s reform bill concerning health care, but still wants more information.

“I want to hear as much as possible about the plan,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien and Sanders said they spent the weekend calling those who were selected in the lottery to receive tickets.

Sanders said some people sounded like they had just won a fortune when they were informed they would be able to attend the forum and hear Obama speak first-hand about his plan.

“It was unbelievable,” Sander said.

Now here’s the real ‘laugh-a-minute’ quote:

O’Brien said she is sure many “hecklers” will be outside Portsmouth High School trying to derail reform, but she said anyone paying attention to the specifics of the plan will support what Obama is trying to do. She balked at those who say the plan is not in the best interest of senior citizens.

“He is actually protecting seniors,” O’Brien said.

Now that’s Astroturf you can believe in.

Mark Steyn finds an excellent example:

This story from Le Journal de Montréal is en français, but you don’t have to know the lingo of the Continent to figure out the meaning of le mot “incontinent”:

Des patients souffrant d’un problème d’incontinence grave doivent attendre jusqu’à trois ans pour une opération qui dure à peine 30 minutes.

Which means: In the Province of Quebec, patients suffering from serious incontinence — ie, they have to aller aux toilettes jusqu’à 12 fois par nuit (that’s 12 times a night) — have to wait three years for a half-hour operation. That’s 3 years times 365 nights times 12 trips to the bathroom.

There are only two urologists in the province who perform the operation, in part because hospital budgets are so tight they decline to buy the necessary “neurostimulator.”

The central point about socialized medicine is that restricting access is the only means of controlling costs. And, when comparisons of health “costs” between nations are made, the time you spend in the bathroom each night and the subsequent impact on your work performance the following day are not factored in.

It just amazes me that people who must have had experience with the DMV yet think that government running health care is a good idea. Look, if it would work, I’d support it – I mean, come on: high quality, low cost health care? Why wouldn’t I want a piece of that? Because I know that it will actually be low quality and high cost. How do I know this? Because I know human nature – and the hospital director who has a certain amount of funds for the year can buy a “neurostimulator”, or he can have the lounge redecorated and give his secretary a pay raise. True, a very high minded and dedicated director would buy the “neurostimulator”, but most people who run government-funded agencies are not known for their dedication to the welfare of the people. On balance, any government run health system will fail, and fail completely.

Oh, to be sure, our liberal friends who want the DMV to run the hospitals can cherry pick out a story or two showing the stunning success of government funded health care. Impervious to facts and completely willing to believe absurd things, our liberals are easily tricked by their leaders into stoutly asserting that the paint isn’t peeling off the walls at the government hospital…because government bureaucrats have always been so hyper-efficient in making things run and, of course, the fact that they get paid the same whether they help 1 or 100 actually makes them want to see more people and treat them better. Such nonsense has to be ignored – there is no other side of the debate, here.

The news story:

A voter registration drive last year illegally required canvassers to meet quotas to keep their jobs and resulted in thousands of “garbage” registrations gumming up Clark County voter rolls, officials said Monday as they released a criminal complaint against the drive’s organizers.

The complaint names the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, as well as Chris Edwards, the group’s former Las Vegas field director, and Amy Busefink, who was regional director for voter registration.

In all, there are 26 charges of compensation for registration of voters and 13 charges of being a “principal” in the incident. An initial hearing has been set for 7:30 a.m. June 3 in Las Vegas Justice Court.

“In Nevada, it is unlawful for a person to provide compensation for registering voters that is based on the total number of voters a person registers,” said state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.

ACORN’s canvassers, she said, had to gather at least 20 voter registrations a day to keep their jobs. There was also a bonus program, known as “blackjack” or “21 plus,” which rewarded employees with $5 extra per shift if they brought in 21 or more completed registrations.

Canvassers under pressure to keep their jobs turned in registrations with fake names and phony addresses — even, in one case, the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys.

“These practices are clearly a violation of Nevada law,” Cortez Masto said. “By structuring employment and compensation around a quota system, ACORN facilitated voter registration fraud in this state.”

You liberals out there still want to claim that ACORN, as an institution, is innocent and merely the victim of over-zealous employees?

What have you got? The fact that your man, Barry, was elevated to the White House at least partially on the back of illegal actions. Now Obama wants to shower taxpayer dollars on this corrupt, anti-American group. What say you?

That’s what these communist/socialist ne’erdowells are calling an erstwhile, room-temperature, piece of slime cop killer:

Oakland, CA–As the city prepares for a massive public funeral for four police officers slain in the line of duty, dozens took to the streets in a show of support for the man authorities say was their killer.

Organized by International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, the march Wednesday evening took participants near a police substation within sight of the two locations where Lovelle Mixon allegedly shot the veteran officers before being slain himself.

Loved ones and supporters walked through the streets chanting, “OPD you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” There were no officers patrolling the march route.

“I don’t condone what he did, but it’s bringing to light the frustrations between the community and the police,” said Uhuru Movement member Kihad Deen. “This gives people a chance to speak their minds.”

Mixon’s cousin, Dolores Darnell, 26, addressed the small crowd, calling him “a true hero, a soldier.”

“This is the real Lovelle,” she said, holding a picture of a smiling Mixon with his wife. “We do apologize for what he did to the officers’ families. But he’s not a monster.”

Yeah. And neither was Frankenstein.

More about these commie Black Panther retreads called the Uhuru:

Lovelle Mixon’s life, like that of thousands of young African men in the impoverished neighborhoods of Oakland, was over long before he was killed by police. He faced a hopeless dead end of joblessness, poverty and criminalization by a society that would rather lock up young African men than make college or jobs available to them.

The police are not social workers; they are a military force with the assignment to carry out a violent containment policy against a whole community. The purpose of the police is to maintain power for the status quo and uphold the relations of poverty and wealth in the city.

If we want to move forward and “build bridges” as a city there is only one road to do so. We have to truly understand the calls of a community under siege and demand an immediate end to this completely failed public policy of police containment, this war without terms waged against the African community of Oakland.

So, concerned about “social justice,” are we? Concerned about a policy of “violent containment,” you say?

Well let me school you about the origin of your discontent. The policy of “containment” is not a police-initiated policy. This may come as somewhat of a surprise to you, but your much reviled “policy of containment” wasn’t even a policy initiated by evil Republicans.

The policy of “containment” was in fact initiated and made possible by LBJ in 1964 with the advent of “The (not so) Great Society” that served to contain and imprison the poor in a never-ending cycle of poverty.

It was perpetuated by years of separating fathers from the responsibility of raising their own children.

It was perpetuated by endless brow-beating about the glass ceiling; placed ostensibly by some mythical entity known as ‘da man;’ not to mention the day after day hammering by elected liberal democrat officials of the message that impoverished minorities could do nothing and would be nothing without white liberals in limousines running to their rescue, doling out the meager sub-subsistence afforded by the welfare state.

The “policy of containment” has been perpetuated as a campaign of fear by white limousine liberals and their black slavemasters (a/k/a, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al.); delivering empty promises and false warnings to their charges that they would starve if democrats weren’t maintained in power. This was done, of course, as a means of perpetuating and “containing” a ready-pocket of democrat voters.

This “policy of containment” is even to this day being perpetuated by the present Administration as the same-old, same-old turd, polished and repackaged in a pretty pink ribbon; now labelled “Hope and Change.”

In short, if Uhurus want to blame someone for their being “contained,’ look no further than your friendly neighborhood liberal democrat congressman or woman.

Then blame yourselves for listening to them.

And by the way, “Hero,” my backside.

He’s going to try and gerrymander the entire United States:

The U.S. Census is supposed to be free of politics, but one group with a history of voter fraud, ACORN, is participating in next year’s count, raising concerns about the politicization of the decennial survey.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now signed on as a national partner with the U.S. Census Bureau in February 2009 to assist with the recruitment of the 1.4 million temporary workers needed to go door-to-door to count every person in the United States — currently believed to be more than 306 million people.

A U.S. Census “sell sheet,” an advertisement used to recruit national partners, says partnerships with groups like ACORN “play an important role in making the 2010 Census successful,” including by “help[ing] recruit census workers.”

What ACORN’s assignment will be is to ensure there is a large over-count of population in Democrat-heavy areas of the country so that in both the US House and in State legislatures, Democrats get more safe seats. Proof? If you don’t believe this assertion then you’re either a blind partisan, or a complete fool. ACORN is a leftwing tool of the Democratic party and its sole purpose is to increase the power of the left – it doesn’t do anything else, it never has done anything else, it won’t ever do anything else. Eventually, when we get a properly courageous GOP government in office, we’ll have to shut it down via criminal prosecutions – meanwhile, Obama is going to use it to corrupt the American political process just as he did in the 2008 campaign.

We’ll have to fight twice as hard in 2010 and 2012 because Democrats will use every dirty trick in the book to thwart us – we’ll need 60% of the vote just to counter-act the votes Democrats will manufacture. Get ready for the battle, fellow GOPers and conservatives.

Like a broken record:

Three years ago, Massachusetts enacted perhaps the boldest state health care experiment in American history, bringing near-universal coverage to the commonwealth with Paul Revere speed.

To make it happen, Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, made an expedient choice, deferring until another day any serious effort to control the state’s runaway health costs.

The day of reckoning has arrived. Threatened first by rapid early enrollment in its new subsidized insurance program and now by a withering economy, the state’s pioneering overhaul has entered a second, more challenging phase.

Thanks to new taxes and fees imposed last year, the health plan’s jittery finances have stabilized for the moment. But government and industry officials agree that the plan will not be sustainable over the next 5 to 10 years if they do not take significant steps to arrest the growth of health spending.

“Arrest the growth of health spending” means “health care rationing” – it is always the result of socialized medicine. When you undertake to promise everyone a thing, everyone will want that thing, and want it really well done. If you are offering people whatever free car they desire, how many people are going to choose the Kia and how many the BMW? As you don’t have an endless supply of BMWs, you’re eventually going to have to work out a system where some people get BMWs, and some get Kias…and as the guy who writes your budget wants a BMW, I think you can see what goes into which parking lot.

There are only so many doctors out there, and among doctors only so many who have a particular specialty. There is only so much money in the budget for overhead, and the budget director can buy another ultra-sound machine, or give a pay raise to the workers whose union is pestering him day in and day out for a raise. Meanwhile, seeing as a doctor or nurse gets paid the same whether they see one or ten patients a day, there’s really no incentive to squeeze that extra appointment in.

And so – you get waiting lists, substandard care, uncaring service providers and bloated administrative budgets, and a lot of people don’t get the care they need because if everyone who needed a kidney transplant got one, it’d bust the budget, even if there were enough staff and equipment to meet the need. But liberals consider this fair – especially liberal leaders, who are sure to set up the system so that they and their families and friends are very well treated by the health care system (in nations with socialized medicine, can any of you out there really imagine the local Prime Minister or even junior legislative back-bencher waiting in line with the unwashed masses for health care?).

Obama now wants to bring this thing nationwide – and he may very well have the votes to carry it through Congress. If we does, we’ll all have health care – if we don’t die before our turn in line comes up.

Obama took a question from the New York Times asking if he was a Socialist. He brushed off the question and later felt the need to call reporters from the Oval Office to “clarify” his response.

oF course, the question is rather silly… we already knew he was (and is) a Socialist.

Looks like birds of a feather do flock together.

Until last week, Carol M. Browner, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick as global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for “global governance” and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change.

By Thursday, Mrs. Browner’s name and biography had been removed from Socialist International’s Web page, though a photo of her speaking June 30 to the group’s congress in Greece was still available.

Socialist International, an umbrella group for many of the world’s social democratic political parties such as Britain’s Labor Party, says it supports socialism and is harshly critical of U.S. policies.

The group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, the organization’s action arm on climate change, says the developed world must reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Obama, who has said action on climate change would be a priority in his administration, tapped Mrs. Browner last month to fill a new position as White House coordinator of climate and energy policies. The appointment does not need Senate confirmation. 

Obama himself was once a member of the Socialist New Party. So really, this doesn’t surprise me one bit.

Mark Steyn gives us a sad catalog of recent outrages:

In Toronto, anti-Israel demonstrators yell “You are the brothers of pigs!”, and a protester complains to his interviewer that “Hitler didn’t do a good job.”

In Fort Lauderdale, Palestinian supporters sneer at Jews, “You need a big oven, that’s what you need!”

In Amsterdam, the crowd shouts, “Hamas, Hamas! Jews to the gas!”

In Paris, the state-owned TV network France-2 broadcasts film of dozens of dead Palestinians killed in an Israeli air raid on New Year’s Day. The channel subsequently admits that, in fact, the footage is not from January 1st 2009 but from 2005, and, while the corpses are certainly Palestinian, they were killed when a truck loaded with Hamas explosives detonated prematurely while leaving the Jabaliya refugee camp in another of those unfortunate work-related accidents to which Gaza is sadly prone. Conceding that the Palestinians supposedly killed by Israel were, alas, killed by Hamas, France-2 says the footage was broadcast “accidentally.”

In Toulouse, a synagogue is firebombed; in Bordeaux, two kosher butchers are attacked; at the Auber RER train station, a Jewish man is savagely assaulted by 20 youths taunting, “Palestine will kill the Jews;” in Villiers-le-Bel, a Jewish schoolgirl is brutally beaten by a gang jeering, “Jews must die.”

In Helsingborg, the congregation at a Swedish synagogue takes shelter as a window is broken and burning cloths thrown in; in Odense, principal Olav Nielsen announces that he will no longer admit Jewish children to the local school after a Dane of Lebanese extraction goes to the shopping mall and shoots two men working at the Dead Sea Products store; in Brussels, a Molotov cocktail is hurled at a Belgian synagogue; in Antwerp, lit rags are pushed through the mail flap of a Jewish home; and, across the Channel, “youths” attempt to burn the Brondesbury Park Synagogue.

In London, the police advise British Jews to review their security procedures because of potential revenge attacks.

As Steyn has pointed out elsewhere, if you think this is bad, just wait until Moslems make up 25% of the European population. At that point, European Jews will be lucky if they are only forced into Ghettos. My advice to European Jews: get out, now. Europe has lost the will to live and they will buy an extra decade of peace with your lives, if that proves necessary (and it will, if the Islamo-fascists have their way about it). The reason the EU is strangely silent about Hamas atrocities and eager with denunciations of Israel’s measured and proportionate response is because there are a lot more Moslems in Europe than there are Jews. Period. End of story.

This isn’t the return of the old anti-Semitism – not a return to the anti-Semitism which ranged from mere social inconvenience to Jews (such as, for most countries, an inability of Jews to join the Navy due to “dietary issues”) up to the pogroms of Czarist Russia. No, this is a return to the Hitlerian nightmare where the Jews are not just singled out as an enemy, but singled out as those who’s death will make for heaven on earth. Six decades after Europe said “never again!”, we’re on the verge of another Holocaust, and only the United States stands as a bulwark for the Jews of Europe and the Middle East against massacre.

There is a lesson to be taken here – that when a society cuts itself off from its wellsprings it will die via suicide and will become progressively nastier and greedier as it goes. Europe started to cut itself off from its Christian roots in the late 18th century and from that time until this, it has just gotten worse…more cruel, more base. Now the Europeans are so weak they can’t even murder on their own…but they are willing accomplices in Islamo-fascist murders of Jews. Standing in the crumbling Imperial box of Judeo-Christian civilization, the Europeans turn thumbs down to those already clawed by the lions…and they do this just to keep the lions busy and spare their own miserable lives for one more day.

Ultimately, the choice will be laid before us – to rescue the Jews, again, as well as those Europeans who have not fallen into the depths of depravity, or allow them to be murdered.

I do wonder what our choice will be?

Or knock me over with one.

Not that this is any big surprise, or anything, but lo and behold, as The Right Perspective reports, Obama’s choice for energy czar just happens to be a card-carrying socialist.

Oh… not just any socialist, mind you, but Carol M. Browner is a member of the “Commission for a Sustainable World Society,” an offshoot of the organization “Socialist International.”

I’ve often observed that far from being a group of well-meaning tree-huggers, the radical environmentalists see environmental issues as one of the primary vehicles from which they can slam more and more of their radical political agenda down our throats; which more than explains why they cling to their environmental dogma a hell of a lot more than conservatives cling to “guns and religion.” This despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.

So is it really any surprise that Barack Hussein Obama, who cut his teeth under the tutelage of such leftist luminaries as Bill Ayers and Saul Alinsky, would actually appoint socialists to help run his administration?

Ya get who you vote for.

“I’m not interested in the suburbs. The suburbs bore me.” -Barack Obama

All I have to say about this is the following: If “socialist” is a code word for “black” then “suburbs” is a code word for “white.”

While I’ve admired President Bush for many reasons, what I could never understand was the President’s reluctance to answer the many unfounded, over-the-top criticisms and out-and-out attacks that were foisted upon him by the left of this nation.

Paul Kengor addresses this in a must-read piece at the American Thinker. For all of the Bush Administration’s successes, most notably his success via perseverance of his Iraq war policy, President Bush’s “new tone” policy set the stage for the relentless, unanswered barrages of assaults by the leftists of this nation and around the world.

The “feel-good” language espoused by many democrats regarding “getting along” and their supposed pining to end the “politics of personal destruction,” in the end, of course, was so much political puffery. On the other hand, George Bush’s “new tone” was not only a buzzword, but S.O.P. for his administration. As with nearly every aspect of his administration (and what those on the left could never fathom nor abide), Bush actually meant what he said and said what he meant when he proclaimed that he would establish “a new tone” in Washington.

Paul Kengor asserts that Bush’s “new tone” was a spinoff of his adherence to his evangelical Christian roots; specifically with regard to the principle of “turning the other cheek (Luke 6:29).”

While a president’s abiding by principle is certainly to be lauded, the application of this principle to Bush’s leftist detractors during his administration yielded disastrous, and yes, even dangerous results. Turning the other cheek allowed the leftists to set the agenda for debate, and allowed them relatively free rein in their efforts to dangerously damage the morale of this country with carte-blanche levels of seditious rhetoric and out-and-out falsehoods. Bush’s “new tone” allowed the leftist elements of this country to give licentious aid and comfort to America’s enemies during a time when our sons and daughters were in harm’s way, giving our enemies encouragement to climb out of their caves and kill another day. Bush’s “new tone” has made it much easier for democrats and other leftist elements to continue relatively unabated on a roll of propaganda based on contrivances that continues to this day, on every issue from energy to foreign policy.

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration’s failure to utilize the bully pulpit to answer unjust criticism and attacks from detractors has left those of us on the right side of the aisle to do all the heavy lifting; which was all well and good, but not enough.

President Bush has many legislative and policy accomplishments for which to be proud. But public opinion and debate in the arena of ideas are also matters of import.

It is my opinion that President Bush’s “new tone” policy is a virtual handbook of how not to play the game.