Friday, July 16, 2010



Hillary Supporters Shocked at Obama Tactics

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, all right. In light of appalling revelations of the fraud and intimidation Obamunists used to steal the Democrat nomination from Hillary, her own supporters — left high and dry by a mainstream media that is for all intents and purposes part of the Obama machine — are appealing to patriots to get their message out. From HillBuzz:



Here's filmmaker Gigi Gaston on Fox & Friends this morning, calling for an investigation into the fraud and voter intimidation Obama and his campaign engaged in back in 2008.

This is how Obama took the nomination from Hillary Clinton, and he used these same thug tactics in the general election to intimidate voters. He will be using the same playbook in 2012 as well, unless he and the DNC are stopped.

In this FOX clip, it's noted that Gaston is the granddaughter of a former Democrat governor … and she's now dedicated her life to exposing the DNC for the cesspool of corruption, fraud, and illegal activity that it is. That is the same boat all of us here are in as well: until 2008, we were all lifelong, unquestioning, party loyal Democrats who never in our lives dreamed our party would be responsible for thuggery like this.

The best way we can describe the feeling we have when we think about the DNC is to remember what the human characters on the TV show "V" felt like when they saw the masks ripped off the "Visitors", revealing them to be lizard people underneath. Even people who had been helping the Visitors, and trying to convince others that they were really here to "serve the human race" in the non-cook book sense were instantly transformed into Resistance fighters when they saw what really lurked behind those masks.

So it is for many lifelong Democrats out there, including such prominent names as Lynn Forester de Rothschild as well, who will never look at the DNC the same way again … not after its mask has been ripped off so spectacularly.

We need to find as many creative and engaging ways as possible to get conservatives and independents out there, who did not pay attention to the Democrat primaries in 2008, to know the story Gigi Gaston has told so well in We Will Not Be Silenced 2008.

It's the only way to stop the lizards at the DNC from doing all of this again in 2012.

Hillary Dems tacitly acknowledge that the establishment media isn't only vociferously partisan; it is sectarian. The DNC subsidiary known as the MSM decided the Manchurian Moonbat should be President. Otherwise, his minions' dirty tricks would have been plastered across the news from the beginning. This is why Shrillary supporters are counting on conservatives and independents to spread the word on Obama's Third World tactics.

Apparently even authoritarian collectivists advocate clean elections when dirty tricks leave them shafted. Here's where everyone but the most fanatical Obamunists can agree: Obama's tactics in the 2012 election, after he's had four years to load the system with ACORN/New Black Panther types, are going to create a stink that will make even his prototypes Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe wrinkle their noses in disgust. The dinosaur media will again be complicit.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

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Liberals analyze their Obama 'despair'

For many liberals, this is the summer of their discontent. Already disappointed with President Barack Obama’s ability to deliver on campaign promises, they now contemplate a slowing economic recovery and a good chance of Republican gains in November — two developments that could make enacting Obama’s agenda even more difficult.

Two recent essays framed the debate raging within the progressive community over why the promise of Obama’s candidacy has not lived up to their expectations — and how liberals should proceed in what they fear will be difficult months ahead.

In a 17,000-plus-word piece published in The Nation on Thursday, journalist Eric Alterman calls the Obama presidency “a big disappointment” for progressives and blames a broken system in Washington that he says allows the minority party to rule with impunity — and special interests and big money to dictate legislative policy.

“Face it,” he concludes, “the system is rigged, and it’s rigged against us.” His essay is subtitled: “Why a progressive presidency is impossible for now.”

But writing in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, editor Michael Tomasky counsels patience, arguing that American history has shown that change always takes time and continued effort against entrenched conservative opposition.

“The changes we want to see won’t happen in 18 months, or in two years, or four, or probably even eight,” he concludes in his article, “Against Despair.”

The essays suggest it is a time of reckoning for a liberal community whose relationship with Obama has had a series of ups and downs since the moment of hope and expectation when he claimed the presidency in Chicago’s Grant Park on Nov. 4, 2008.

“It’s not just really about Obama; it’s about the state of our country. Every day, you have a sense that people are wondering where this country is headed,” says Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation.

The elation of that night in 2008 quickly gave way to the realization that the No. 1 issue, the economy, and the ensuing fight over an $800 billion stimulus bill, would make Obama's agenda different from the one he had described in his campaign.

From the beginning, the stimulus bill was viewed as containing too many compromises in a futile attempt to garner Republican support. Economist and columnist Paul Krugman led the charge, arguing that the bill was not ambitious enough, containing too many tax cuts and not enough funding for infrastructure projects.

But the bill’s $800 billion price tag created a toxic environment for congressional Democrats when they began the long debate over health care, and many liberals viewed Obama’s compromises on the legislation as a betrayal. The low point may have been after the special election victory of Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) in January, when the possibility of any health care legislation seemed lost.

“It’s open season on Obama, whom so many hoped would lead us out of the neoliberal wilderness,” Firedoglake blogger Les Leopold declared not long afterward. “He once was a community organizer and ought to know how working people have suffered through a generation of tax breaks for the rich, Wall Street deregulation and unfair competition. When the economy crashed, he was in the perfect position to limit the unjustified pay levels on Wall Street.

“Instead, we got a multitrillion-dollar bailout for Wall Street, no health care reform, no serious financial reforms whatsoever, record unemployment and political gridlock that will be with us for years to come.”

More HERE

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Tax mad New York

And LeBron James is not the first to vote with his feet. Climate is not the only reason why the phonelines run hot between Boca Raton and NYC

A WEEK before LeBron James's announcement on ESPN that he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers to join the Miami Heat, the New York Post and Rush Limbaugh saw it coming -- and for reasons having nothing to do with sports.

"If LeBron James goes to the Miami Heat instead of the Knicks," the Post noted gloomily on July 1, "blame our dysfunctional lawmakers in Albany, who have saddled top-earning New Yorkers with the highest state and city income taxes in the nation, soon to be 12.85 percent on top of the IRS bite. There is no state income tax in Florida." Consequently, a five-year, $96 million contract (the estimated deal he could get in either city), would cost James $12.34 million in New York taxes, but nothing in Miami. "Quite a penalty for the privilege of working in Midtown."

On the radio that day, Limbaugh, an ex-New Yorker, amplified the point: "Here you have these poor schlubs that . . . own the Knicks and they're going to try to persuade LeBron James to move to New York to play for the Knicks and they gotta tell him, 'By the way, you're going to pay about 12 to 15, maybe $20 million more in taxes in New York than you would [in Florida].'" Limbaugh drolly asked his audience whether James should take the Knicks' offer "and pay the additional taxes to show his 'compassion,'" or sign with Miami and "use the additional money for his own economic stimulus."

Other armchair accountants raised the tax issue after James's announcement on July 8. The Miami Herald and CNBC pointed out that because Cleveland has a city income tax and Miami doesn't, even a Heat contract worth $29 million less than what the Cavs offered him would still leave James with $1 million more in take-home pay. The Wall Street Journal remarked that Cleveland should be used to high-income refugees fleeing its excessive tax rates, having seen half of its Fortune 500 companies -- and tens of thousands of taxpayers -- leave in recent years.

In sports as in most other enterprises, the more you tax something, the less of it you generally end up with it. World-class athletes are no more immune to financial incentives than world-class doctors, lawyers, or entrepreneurs.

On Monday, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, the world record-holder in both the 100- and 200-meter dash, pulled out of next month's Diamond League track meet at the Crystal Palace in London. The reason: Britain's exorbitant tax laws, which would force Bolt to pay more in taxes than he would earn by winning the race. Lewis Hamilton, a British Formula One racing star, moved to Switzerland after his first season in 2007. He initially said he was seeking "to escape the public eye," commented the Wheels blog at NYTimes.com, "but there's no getting around the fact that Switzerland is also a tax haven."

The first boxing event at the new Yankee Stadium in June -- a fight between Miguel Cotti and Yuri Forman for the World Boxing Association's junior middleweight title -- attracted well over 20,000 spectators. But Yankees COO Lonn Trost conceded afterward that future fights of that caliber are unlikely, since the tax on a fighter's purse in New York is much higher for non-residents than it is elsewhere. That extinguishes any hope of a Yankee stadium superfight between champions Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. "We'd love to do [Mayweather-Pacquiao], but I believe both of them are non-residents," Trost told the New York Post, "and the tax could be as much as 13 percent on the purse, where the tax out in Vegas is zero. That's a big difference." It sure is.

Avoiding high taxes is not the only reason sports stars -- or anyone else -- move from one jurisdiction to another. Weather, family, education, love -- any of them may play a role. But it is no coincidence that far more people migrate from high-tax states (California, New York, Ohio) to low-tax states (Florida, New Hampshire, Texas) than the other way around. When tax rates bite, taxpayers and businesses are driven to escape -- or are deterred from coming in the first place. There's nothing inexplicable about the fact that people don't like paying high taxes and may change their lives to avoid them. The real mystery is why so many advocates of high taxes never seem to learn that lesson.

SOURCE

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An interesting email from Sam Wells, one libertarian who is NOT reflexively "anti-war"

As the 2010 elections approach, the pro-Democrat Party propaganda machine is in high gear and left-wing agents of disinformation are being dispatched to confuse and mislead. Much of this activity has already been going on for years; it is just on a more intense level these days.

For example, regardless of the actual historic origins of the word "neoconservative" in America, the label "neocon" has come to be used as a smear term against conservative Jews -- i.e., those independent thinkers who have chosen to leave the Democrat Party reservation and vote Republican instead of doing what they are told to do by the old-guard left-wing leaders. According to exit polls, 77% of those who identified themselves as Jewish voted for Obama in 2008. The DNC wants to keep it that way, of course, but since Obama's election there has been an increasing wave of sentiment change within the Jewish community away from the Democrat Party and toward the Republican Party or in sympathy with the tea party activities. The label "neocon" is also used by "anti-war" posturers against anyone they perceive as disagreeing with them.

At the same time, those individualist libertarians and objectivists who have warned against the trap of ethnic identity syndrome (as exemplified by the Madoff swindle cases) are targeted by whispering campaigns as "antisemitic" or worse. Genuine self esteem comes from personal efforts toward achievement of laudable goals rather than identifying oneself with a racial collective or tribal group. It is important for libertarians and conservatives not to fall for these divisive tactics of the establishment Left.

This is certainly not to say that I agree with all those who define themselves as "neoconservatives"; not at all. I have often cautioned that many of even the true neoconservatives seem to cling to some liberal-left baggage from their pasts, especially in the area of economics or domestic policy. But I am more concerned about the possible influence of populistic ideological tangents on the pro-liberty American Right.

We need all the allies we can get, it seems to me. To the extent that the neoconservative agenda (a strong U.S. military preparedness and a pro-American foreign policy) is consistent with my own pro-freedom outlook tactically and strategically, I advocate welcoming those who are relatively new allies in the fight against leftism rather than denouncing them with smear labels borrowed from the left-wing propaganda mills.

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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