Did the NY Times Just Lose the Election for the Empty Chair?

New York Times Proves Clint Eastwood Correct -- Obama Is Lousy CEO

Forbes:

h/t to Deonia Copeland

A Sunday New York Times front page story — New York Times! — might have killed President Obama’s re-election hopes.

The story is called “The Competitor in Chief — Obama Plays To Win, In Politics and Everything Else.” It is devastating.

With such a title, and from such a friendly organ, at first I thought Jodi Kantor’s piece would be a collection of Obama’s greatest political wins: His rapid rise in Illinois, his win over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries, the passage of health care, and so on.

But the NYT piece is not about any of that. Rather, it is a deep look into the two outstanding flaws in Obama’s executive leadership:

1. How he vastly overrates his capabilities:

But even those loyal to Mr. Obama say that his quest for excellence can bleed into cockiness and that he tends to overestimate his capabilities. The cloistered nature of the White House amplifies those tendencies, said Matthew Dowd, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, adding that the same thing happened to his former boss. “There’s a reinforcing quality,” he said, a tendency for presidents to think, I’m the best at this.

2. How he spends extraordinary amounts of time and energy to compete in — trivialities.

“For someone dealing with the world’s weightiest matters, Mr. Obama spends surprising energy perfecting even less consequential pursuits. He has played golf 104 times since becoming president, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who monitors his outings, and he asks superior players for tips that have helped lower his scores. He decompresses with card games on Air Force One, but players who do not concentrate risk a reprimand (“You’re not playing, you’re just gambling,” he once told Arun Chaudhary, his former videographer).

His idea of birthday relaxation is competing in an Olympic-style athletic tournament with friends, keeping close score. The 2009 version ended with a bowling event. Guess who won, despite his history of embarrassingly low scores? The president, it turned out, had been practicing in the White House alley.

Kantor’s piece is full of examples of Obama’s odd need to dominate his peers in everything from bowling, cards, golf, basketball, and golf (104 times in his presidency). Bear in mind, Obama doesn’t just robustly compete. The leader of the free world spends many hours practicing these trivial pursuits behind the scenes. Combine this weirdly wasted time with a consistent overestimation of his capabilities, and the result is, according to NYT’s Kantor:

He may not always be as good at everything as he thinks, including politics. While Mr.

“Obama has given himself high grades for his tenure in the White House — including a “solid B-plus” for his first year — many voters don’t agree, citing everything from his handling of the economy to his unfulfilled pledge that he would be able to unite Washington to his claim that he would achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Those were not the only times Mr. Obama may have overestimated himself: he has also had a habit of warning new hires that he would be able to do their jobs better than they could.

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Though he never ran a large organization before becoming president, he initially dismissed internal concerns about management and ended up with a factionalized White House and a fuzzier decision-making process than many top aides wanted.

Kantor’s portrait of Obama is stunning. It paints a picture of a CEO who is unfocused and lost.

Imagine, for a minute, that you are on the board of directors of a company. You have a CEO who is not meeting his numbers and who is suffering a declining popularity with his customers. You want to help this CEO recover, but then you learn he doesn’t want your help. He is smarter than you and eager to tell you this. Confidence or misplaced arrogance? You’re not sure at first. If the company was performing well, you’d ignore it. But the company is performing poorly, so you can’t.

With some digging, you learn, to your horror, that the troubled CEO spends a lot of time on — what the hell? — bowling? Golf? Three point shots? While the company is going south?

What do you do? You fire that CEO. Clint Eastwood was right. You let the guy go.

The Empty Chair Is Losing

American Thinker:

President Obama is headed to defeat in November, and it won't be close. Forget about the polls, and forget about the cadre of delusional Democrats who can't stop telling us how great and successful the last three and a half years have been. Slick Willy can shill all he likes, but seriously, he's preaching to the choir, because the only ones believing his shtick are bought and paid for sycophants, crony capitalists, and members of the mainstream media.

Can you think of a single person who didn't vote for Barack Obama in 2008 but will vote for him this time around? Yet it is easy to find former minions admitting to the dissolution of their belief in the primacy of the "one." These people will not vote for him again -- and they are legion.

Pols like Bill Clinton say what they have to say, and election polls are often designed to say what the designers want them to say. But Americans, ever the social creatures they are, remembering the hopes and dreams they had for a better world in 2008 -- and the hopes and dreams they have today for a better tomorrow -- are reluctant to tell someone taking a poll that they don't like Barack Obama. It doesn't matter how well a case can be made against the man's disastrous and disgraceful leadership; guilt can often preclude telling a stranger they plan to vote against the black guy -- especially today, when all opposition to the president is framed as racist.

Yet, at some point, that curtain closes in the voting booth, and a decision has to be made as to which candidate is better for voters, their children, and the future of America.

When watching the news or any of the president's campaign speeches, it is easy to get the message that Barack Obama is way ahead and can't lose. His successes are portrayed as many and significant, although he needs another term because much still needs to be done. After all, the Republicans have stymied his every selfless effort these last three and a half years, and "we can't go back."

He did his best, and there was nothing more he could have done to improve what was an unprecedented (everything with Barack is unprecedented) decline in economic activity. Didn't Obama call the downturn the "great recession?" The misery the nation feels now is an illusion -- or else, they tell us, it is simply the "new normal."

But usually in mainstream media world, all is well -- and Americans should pay no attention to the price of gasoline, or the unavailability of financing for mortgages or business investment, or the price of groceries and the dearth of jobs. Who needs a job when they have Barack Obama?

The media, Obama, and his adulators have become the "check is in the mail" bloc. Things are better; we just haven't noticed.

Yet there are no real accomplishments, which would be bad enough if it stopped there, but in actuality, everything is much worse since many trusted the "one" in 2008 to solve all the ills of the nation and humanity. All he has done during his tenure is torture the economy into submission with poor decisions, bad legislation, overregulation, and threats of onerous taxation.

It's been said that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of Americans, but it is also true that no one ever got rich continually assuming that Americans were idiots. You see, just when a demigod like Barack is convinced he has demagogued his way into the hearts and minds of the electorate, the nation wakes up, and a deafening "thud" can be heard as he falls back down to earth.

Seniors see the true danger to Medicare comes from ObamaCare, a legislative nightmare. Obamacare strips $716 billion from Medicare, and as a result, seniors in states like Florida will make their voices heard this Election Day.

Workers and commuters see the price of gasoline as a function of Barack's desire to be the one who breaks America's dependency on fossil fuels. Yet like everything Obama does, he seeks to do it backwards. Because he can't make alternative energy cheap enough to overwhelm fossil fuels as the main source of energy in America, he chooses to make fossil fuels so expensive that his green energy dreams seem cheap by comparison. Gasoline at $4 a gallon and necessarily skyrocketing electric bills are the "new normal." Didn't you know?

If people's lives have to be destroyed to usher in this new era, then, so be it. They should be grateful that the destruction of their hopes and dreams is in service of the greater Barack Obama good. History books will not remember the individual whose life was ruined today, but they will certainly remember Obama as the man who saved humanity from what might have happened in a hundred years. And isn't that what's important?

Small business understands that Obama built this. They understand this so well that there are trillions of dollars sitting on the sidelines awaiting his departure next January. They may have supported him in 2008, but does anyone think business owners, long demonized by Barack and minions, are going to vote for Mr. Obama again? No, they will run kicking and screaming to the polls to vote for anyone but the man who has destroyed their incomes and futures, and those of their children.

States with a culture of coal mining are also running away from Barack. After all, miners have families, and killing King Coal has not only hurt the interests of America and Americans, but slain the future of an industry long important to the nation's prosperity. Who needs cheap energy anyway?

The United Coal Miners Union sat out the Democrat National Convention. Although they didn't jump ship, they weren't about to support the moron killing coal jobs while making electricity more expensive and ceding energy independence in the process. I suspect that Obama will get few miner votes this election.

I believe that the administration's war on coal and the slow realization that the EPA's future plan for war on fracking have already won Ohio and Pennsylvania for Mitt Romney, despite what the polls say. A union member working in the fossil fuel industry is never going to admit to supporting a Republican, yet he still wants to feed his family and send his kids to college...and maybe someday even retire. Four more years of Barack, and he won't even have a job.

At the Democrat National Convention, John Kerry said Americans should "ask Osama bin Laden if he's better off now than he was four years ago."

The answer would be "no," just as it is for most Americans, because Obama is killing us. Bin Laden at least has the luxury of being dead; the job is finished.

For us, Obama needs another 4 years.

On November 6, 2012, Americans will flock to the polls to ensure that Barack Obama does not get another term to finish the job he started, and the empty chair will lose in a landslide.

For anyone who thought that Clint Eastwood had lost it at the Republican National Convention with his  chair routine… carrying on a conversation with President Barack Obama (represented by an empty chair).

Clint knew exactly what he was doing…  Here is the only known portrait of Karl Marx… with the Barack Obama Chair.

Technorati Tags: empty chair,Obamaland lost,Clint Eastwood,NY Times,Obamaland,Karl Marx,Election 2012,2012 Election,EPA,PC,Politicial Correctness,racism,reverse racism,national debt,ObamaCare,Medicare,gas prices,recession,joblessness,fracking,groceries,Narcissism,radical ideology,socialism,Progressivism,Mitt Romney in 2012,Romney-Ryan,Forbes,one term Obama,radicals in the White House,Eastwooding

From the cradle to the grave, Obama says the government should control your life

By: Old Ironsides  - Conscience of a Conservative – Cross-Posted by TMH of the Noisy Room

Well, Obama’s mask is finally beginning to slip off his face. A few days ago the 2012 Obama campaign released its official slogan, FORWARD, and immediately the origins of this favorite action word became known thanks to Obama’s greatest adversary, the conservative bloggers. From now until November the Democrats will be marching FORWARD to victory. Just as their fellow communists have done in the past. Most of those communist posters from past history were not written in English so they’re not as obvious, see the blog written by Hack Wilson, http://www.hackwilson.blogspot.com/ But, even though Obama’s Democrats left out the revolutionary soldier carrying the red flag in their poster, at least one of those communist posters from modern history is in English. And it is most convincing in its true meaning when the Leading Light Communist Organization uses it.

So now the Obama Democrats have taken the next step in convincing everyone of their true purpose, spreading the philosophy of Karl Marx. Only the Obama Democrats are being a bit cautious because they are revealing their plan in little pieces. Such as their new web site propaganda piece “The Life of Julia” wherein the Democrats show their love and compassion for everyone from the cradle to the grave. The part they left out is what they expect from you in return.

No, it isn’t Socialism, it isn’t Communism, it isn’t Marxism, its just our good old Democrat pretender Barack Hussein Obama telling America that life is better when you depend on the government to give you everything you need. Is the word “depend” the right one to use? Maybe the sentence should read: Life is better when you allow the government to control your life, because control is what the Democrats want. Too bad the wisdom of a true American patriot, Thomas Jefferson, has been forgotten by so many Democrats today. Back in the days when our Founding Fathers were creating our Republic, Jefferson argued that “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.” Maybe that’s why so many liberal teachers are rewriting American History today because they don’t want tomorrow’s voters to think about these things.

I know where I’ve heard that Democrat slogan before. It was first written by Karl Marx when he said: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” And Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were the authors of The Communist Manifesto. The Obama Democrats have presented the later part of the Marxist statement, the part that appeals to greed, but they conveniently left off the first part, the part that dictates what the government wants in return. Wikipedia reveals the complete origin, along with the full text in which it appeared.

The complete paragraph containing Marx’s statement of the creed in the ‘Critique of the Gotha Program’ is as follows:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Then another search of Wikipedia reveals more on the application of this basic communist philosophy.

“Claiming themselves to be at a “lower stage of communism (i.e., “socialism”, in line with Marx’s terminology), the Soviet Union adapted the formula as: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work (labor investment)”. ”

Proletarians and Communists
The second section, “Proletarians and Communists”, starts by stating the relationship of conscious communists to the rest of the working class, declaring that they will not form a separate party that opposes other working-class parties, will express the interests and general will of the proletariat as a whole, and will distinguish themselves from other working-class parties by always expressing the common interest of the entire proletariat independently of all nationalities and representing the interests of the movement as a whole.

The section goes on to defend communism from various objections, such as the claim that communists advocate “free love“, and the claim that people will not perform labor in a communist society because they have no incentive to work.The section ends by outlining a set of short-term demands:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form and combination of education with industrial production.[15]

The implementation of these policies would, as believed by Marx and Engels, be a precursor to the stateless and classless society. In a controversial passage they suggested that the “proletariat” might in competition with the bourgeoisie be compelled to organize as a class, form a revolution, make itself a ruling class, sweep away the old conditions of production, and in that step have abolished its own supremacy as a class. This account of the transition from socialism to communism was criticized particularly during and after the Soviet era.

My name is Nelson Abdullah and I am Old Ironsides.

The 0bama administration is trying to have this removed from Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_%28generic_name_of_socialist_publications%29

 

Technorati Tags: politics,Socialism,Progressivism,radicals,Marxism,Obamaland,Communism,watch the other hand

We Were Warned

Click on the "PLAY" button to watch the video: Reagan Vs. Obama - Social Economics 101

Video: Reagan Warned Us About Obama

OBAMA TO OFFICIALLY LAUNCH CAMPAIGN ON KARL MARX'S BIRTHDAY

YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP!

Obama will officially launch his 2012 re-election campaign, and no I'm not kidding, on Karl Marx's birthday, May 5th! First, we learn that Earth Day was started on the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, the Communist butcher and founder of the USSR, now we learn that Barack Obama, America's first Marxist president, is launching his campaign on the father of communism's birthday? Come on, now. This is just too appropriate! How fitting!

Coincidence? Stupid oversight? Or, an intentional middle-finger in the face of the American people? You be the judge!

Less Government = More Freedom

Election 2012… We Can’t Afford 4-More Years!

Is Romney Conservative Enough?

As Newt Gingrich suspended his campaign for the GOP nominee for President he said he is often asked, “Is Romney conservative enough?”

His answer is: “Compared to Barack Obama, the most radical president in U.S. history? We are not talking about Mitt Romney running against Ronald Reagan… We are talking about Mitt Romney running against Barack Obama.”  The answer is clear!

We are also talking about freedom vs. nanny state, free-market capitalism vs. socialism and hope vs. mediocrity.

If you love America at this point the goal has to be voting and supporting Mitt Romney to beat Barack Hussein Obama in 2012, and to surround Romney with a fiscally and socially sound and conservative House and Senate, no matter who else you wanted as your first pick for the GOP nominee. 

4-more-years of Obama will turn us into the bankrupt United Socialist States of America and/or a minor player in a New World Economic Order run by the United nations.  Staying home and not working for or at least voting for Romney is a vote for Obama… it is how we ended up with Jimmy Carter. Conservatives and Independents who were disappointed that Reagan did not get the nomination that time around were disappointed so stayed home… Carter (who looks moderate against Obama) won.

Full Documentary of 20th Century Dictators – History We Cannot Forget And Connections We Need to Make!

Revolutionary Holocaust premiered today Friday, January 22 at 5p ET on the Fox News Channel... If you missed it or want to see it again, below is the full documentary and related posts and links. Please take the time to watch the videos and to read and follow the posts and links.


Revolutionary Holocaust (taken from a Karl Marx) quote takes us back in time to examine the roots of socialism and communism and the evil that followed. We all know about the horrors of the holocaust where the pure evil Hitler inspired claimed the lives of millions of innocent people. But most do not know about the millions upon millions of lives lost in a different genocide of the Ukrainian people under the Stalin regime. This special also takes a look behind the iconic fashion symbol of Che Guevara showing that the myth doesn't tell the story of the man who was a blood thirsty killer. We meet a family who saw first hand what a monster the man was. They know the cost of communism and you will too when you hear their story, and who can forget about Mao Zedong? A leader responsible for 70-million deaths during his reign. All communist. All killers. We will show you things you've never seen but need to.

More info on this movie, its contributors and background.

In order to prepare yourself for this movie, and to have a better understanding of the history and context behind it, Glenn Beck has provided a series of articles from contributors. Please read these and discuss them with your family before viewing the movie, especially if you are going to watch this with children.
NOTE: Glenn has said that the movie, while shocking, is appropriate for teens, but would recommend that a parent view it alone before viewing with younger children.

Video: Preview of Documentary

Background Piece on Documentary: The Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free… Or Die

Prep Article One: Exposing the Real Che Guevara
by Humberto Fontova

Today the world's largest image of the man so many hipsters sport on their
shirts adorns Cuba's headquarters and torture chambers for it's KGB-trained secret police. For those familiar with Che Guevara's history, nothing could be more fitting.
Alas, such familiarity seems rare. The most popular version of the Che T-shirt and poster, for instance, sports the slogan "Fight Oppression" under his famous face. This is the face of a man who co-founded a regime that jailed more of its subjects than did Stalin's and murdered more its subjects in its first three years in power than did Hitler's in its first six. In 1959, with the help of Soviet GRU agents, the man celebrated on that T-shirt helped found, train and indoctrinate Cuba's secret police. "Always interrogate your prisoners at night," Che ordered his goons. "A man's resistance is always lower at night."

Read the rest of this article

Exorcising the Ghost of Che Guevara

Prep Article Two: The Famine of 1932-1933, A Genocide by Other Means - by Taras Hunczak

The Western World - having experienced the Renaissance of humanism, which freed the individual from the Medieval spirit of conformity and, building upon that experience, proceeded to establish the principle of the natural rights of man in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, ending the quest for individual and national freedom in the era of Romanticism of the 19th century - entered the 20th century with great expectations. Unfortunately, the 20th century witnessed great disappointments, tragedies and bloodshed the likes of which the world had never seen before.
There were two world wars, which cost humanity millions of lives and wasted great resources. Even worse, totalitarian regimes were created that destroyed millions of innocent lives. It is they - the Nazis and the Communists - who pursued the policy of ruthless oppression, which was accompanied by a policy of genocide. What a sad and tragic picture for humanity the 20th century represents when we consider the mass killings of the Armenian people or the long lines of Jews and Gypsies escorted by the Nazis to their execution.

Read the rest of this article

Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free... Or Die - Video 1

Prep Article Three: The Soviet Story
by Edvins Snore

I decided I decided to make the documentary film “The Soviet Story” to show the world the history of those nations, millions of people, who lived behind the Iron Curtain, under Soviet occupation.
When I made "The Soviet Story", I knew Russia would not like it. But I did not expect that they would hang and burn my effigy in the streets of Moscow after the film was released. The crowd was shouting: "We will not let rewrite our history!"
Indeed, the film shows the Soviet history in a different light, than the current Russian text books, which call Stalin a successful manager, ignoring the fact that under Stalin’s "successful management" 7 million Ukrainians were intentionally starved to death. Whole nations and ethnic groups were wiped off the map.

Read the rest of this article

Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free... Or Die – Video 2

Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free... Or Die – Video 3

Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free... Or Die – Video 4

Prep Article Four: Equal Evil, Unequal Outrage
by Jonah Goldberg

Communism is, to be fair, a dirty word. But not that dirty. You can wear a Mao hat to your local organic coffee shop. You can hang a campy poster of Lenin in your dorm room right next to the Bob Marley cheesecloth. A hemp-fabric Che Guevara t-shirt? Man, you’re cool.
In other words, it’s taboo, but fashionably taboo. No politician with ambitions for a career outside of the fever swamps of college town gasbaggery would ever cop to the C-word. But few politicians – Democratic politicians at least -- would pay a price later in life for dabbling in “radical politics” in their youth. Meanwhile, if you complain about some kid wearing Karl Marx on his t-shirt you’re just letting the world know how un-hip and hung-up you are.

Read the rest of this article

---

Prep Article Five: Exorcising the Ghost of Che - His violetn life undercuts his mythic image.
by Nick Gillespie
How resilient is the ghost of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary who ably assisted the Castro brothers' sadly successful mission to turn Cuba into an island hellhole? His legend survives even a lackluster, long-winded biopic released in 2008 and now just out on DVD.
More important, Che's legend survives the facts of his own life. Born in 1928 and gunned down in 1967 by drunken Bolivian soldiers, Che rarely missed an opportunity to make life miserable for those who opposed him. During the fight against the Batista regime, Che ordered the summary executions of dozens of real and suspected enemies, becoming the very thing he said revolutionaries must be: a "cold-blooded killing machine." As a leader in post-Revolution Cuba, Che became known as the "butcher of La Cabaña" prison, where he oversaw hundreds of murders of political prisoners and "counter-revolutionaries."

Read the rest of this article

Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free... Or Die – Video 5

Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free... Or Die – Video 6

The Progressive Movement
Austria in 1938

Studying and understanding history will ALWAYS teach us about the future. We must, however, learn the truth. For 100 years, Progressive Education has worked hard to change, distort and erase "inconvenient" history. Watch Glenn Beck's first Documentary to learn the REAL HISTORY behind 20th Century Dictators. Part of the plan and program of the American Progressive Movement has been to re-write history and the purposeful dumbing down of America by a large variety of methods.

The dictators above are disciples of the same philosophy that American Progressives headed up by Cloward and Piven and Saul Alinsky that today’s modern day progressives believe in. Our greatest enemy is ignorance or history and the past!!

(American) Progressivism, Fascism, Socialism and Communism are all related terms, on the same side of the political scale…  The opposite of all of them is Anarchy

Video – The 1930's and The Great Depression: Could This Happen Again? 

Making The Connections… (Part 1) – It is Time to…

HMMM… Just Can’t Figure Out the Obama Nobel Prize??? Perhaps the Answer Is Thorbjorn Jagland…

Who is Thorbjorn Jagland? Obama’s Nobel patron is a long-time leader of Socialist International

With the choice of President Obama for the Nobel Peace Prize inspiring such widespread befuddlement, it seems worthwhile to ask, just who are these people who made this choice, and what might their agenda be?

Accompanying news stories on the award were photos of a smiling Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, admiringly hold a photo of the U.S. president.

Vice president, Socialist International

This is the man who spoke gushingly about the hope Obama has inspired. Who is Thorbjorn Jagland?

Some stories have reported that he is the former prime minister of Norway, and that he was the leader of the Norwegian Labor Party for 10 years. But he recently completed an even more interesting 10-year tenure.

From 1999 through 2008, Jagland was vice president of Socialist International. What’s that? It’s exactly what the name suggests – an international organization of socialist groups who advocate for far left policies. It also boasts of “consultative status” with the United Nations.

Its statement of principles calls for “the internationalisation of the economy” and all sort of other socialist boilerplate. It also rejects the notion of “armed peace” between superpowers, and wants Europe to play a lead role in basically disarming everyone.

Socialist International has member organizations from most countries, including one from the United States, Democratic Socialists of America, which touts its vision of what it calls an “alternative to capitalism.” Its newsletter, The Activist, is filled with articles that sing the praises of folks like Karl Marx and the late socialist radical Michael Harrington.

Jagland also serves as chairman of the board of the Oslo Center, which pursues Jimmy Carter-like interventions into conflicts and tries to mediate peace talks (in fact, the Oslo Center and the Carter Center work together), and came under criticism when he was selected as Oslo Center chairman because he was still president of the Norwegian parliament at the time, and was accepting money for both gigs.

It is no surprise, given his memberships and proclivities, that Jagland would welcome a weakened United States on the international stage. Of course, for one to be a socialist in the European setting is hardly a shocker. Many left-wing political parties in Europe are open about their socialism. They embrace groups like the Oslo Center and the United Nations because these are forums in which the United States is only one voice among many.

For the European socialist who detests the idea of the United States as the world’s pre-eminent power, giving over international decision-making authority to groups like these furthers the goal of a world in which socialist despots have just as much say in the affairs of the world as free, democratic nations.

This does not necessarily prove that President Obama is a socialist. Indeed, the aforementioned Democratic Socialists of America lament on their web site that he is not one of them, and express no end of their frustration in this regard.

But what it does show is the agenda of the people who chose Obama for the Nobel Peace Prize, not to mention the fact that, for whatever reason, they see tremendous hope in him and in what they expect him to do.

What might that be? Stand down in Afghanistan? Give over enforcement of environmental regulations to the UN? Abandon U.S. support of Israel? These are all socialist priorities.

Obama has already sold out Eastern Europe on the question of missile defenses. No wonder Jagland likes him.

The Nobel Peace Prize is regarded as an extremely prestigious award, but when you actually find out who chooses the winners, you realize it is a radical outfit with a decidedly anti-American agenda. The fact that they are so excited about Barack Obama being president of the United States, given their broader agenda for the world, should be the real – and very disturbing – news here.

Dan Calabrese

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power - Cross-posted: Daily Thought Pad

Making The Connections… (Part 1) – It is Time to…

The Socialist Solution to the Crisis

Thatcherism and Reaganism have failed on a momentous scale.

The job losses, repossessions, uncertainty, fear and misery faced by the people of Europe, the United States and Japan are a terrible stain on the consciences of those bankers and politicians whose doctrine of neo-liberal markets plunged us all into this crash. But the effect of the crisis on the Third World is of an entirely different magnitude. While developed countries scramble to save their economies, half of humanity languishes. For many, this means hunger, disease and death.

In Europe, we have been protected from the worst effects of the crisis thanks to welfare states built up over the past 60 years to cushion citizens from the threats posed by the free market. We can all count on state health care, social housing, education, unemployment support and other universal, tax-funded services.

The task facing us is to extend and adapt this unique recipe for prosperity and solidarity to the developing world, where according to the World Health Organization between 200,000 and 400,000 additional children will die each year due to the global economic downturn. Prices for natural resources are falling, the stream of earnings sent back to developing countries by migrant workers is drying up, government debts are being called in, and spending slashed.

In Asia, Africa and Latin America this will mean job losses in industry and strains on agriculture. Children are being pulled out of school to work in fields or to provide an extra income, livestock are being sold, and unscrupulous employers are extracting even more from overworked and underpaid sweatshop laborers. Political instability has already claimed governments in Guinea Bissau and Madagascar, and unrest is building elsewhere.

It is vitally important that we fight the global financial and economic crisis, but we must remember that this crisis comes on top of a number of crises in the developing world. It adds further misery to the food crisis, the migration crisis, the climate and energy crisis, and the environmental crisis.

So now, as we react to the near-collapse of the international financial system, and as people recognize the fundamental flaws in the neo-liberal recipe of deregulated, market-led globalization, we have a unique opportunity to develop a new approach.

The simplistic dictum of more markets and less government -- championed by Reagan, Thatcher and their ideological heirs -- has failed on a momentous scale. In the White House, President Hope has replaced President Tax Cuts for the Rich. As we go into the G-20 meeting in London, even European conservatives such as Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel are calling for a new global financial architecture, better financial regulation and a crackdown on tax havens. The previously unimaginable idea of a "Global New Deal" is suddenly on many people's lips.

We must press harder than ever for the implementation of the eight Millennium Development Goals agreed to by the United Nations in 2000, which include halving extreme poverty, achieving universal primary education, and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS. A global crackdown on tax havens and tax avoidance could provide the funds to take the fight against such scourges as infectious diseases, maternal mortality and poverty to a whole new level. We could base our stimulus spending on smart green growth, making real progress in protecting the environment. Would that not be an inspiring way to combat the recession?

We must press for the strongest possible international agreement on climate change, and make it politically impossible for conservatives to argue that we cannot afford this. We must show that the costs of doing nothing far outweigh the costs of switching to a carbon-free economy, not least because the actions required have the potential to create millions of jobs.

We must also renew our faith in diplomacy as a means to achieve peace. The West now has no excuses for failing to establish dialogue with countries like Iran, countries whose aggressive strength is only augmented if we do not engage all players in peaceful conflict resolution.

I am hopeful that the G-20 will make progress on these areas. But we cannot just leave it to them. We must keep up the pressure by demanding a globalization that works for everyone, and forge new alliances and new lines of communication across national boundaries. We must develop new, progressive ways to achieve global justice.

That's why, as the G-20 meets in London, an even larger group will meet in Brussels -- a group of progressive politicians, trade unionists, NGOs, academics and figures from major international institutions. This is the world conference of the Global Progressive Forum (GPF), which will bring together speakers from five continents to develop a new vision of a globalized world which benefits all. The GPF will take place in the European Parliament and will be opened by Bill Clinton. It will feature debates and discussions on the issues of global governance, trade, financial markets, decent work, migration and climate change, all aimed at coordinating global answers to what are global crises. It shows that the world's progressives are serious about making a solidaristic social model a reality for all.

In ancient Greek drama, the word "krisis" refers to the pivot on which the plot turns, the point at which its resolution, the moment of death or triumph, is decided. How will our crises be resolved? The systemic failings brought to light by the economic crisis offer us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a proactive new start on all fronts. Now is the time to ensure that this pivotal moment is not wasted. Now is the time for change.

Mr. Rasmussen is president of the Party of European Socialists and a former prime minister of Denmark (1993-2001).

By POUL NYRUP RASMUSSEN - For the Wall Street Journal

• Karl Marx could not have said it better...
• The UN back globalism a new global currency...
• The world is upside down when France and Germany are lecturing us about spending too much and too much government involvement.
• And all signs lead to the end of capitalism and the march to socialism within the United States if Americans don't stand up for their country and what they believe in... and do it quickly.

Here Come the Commies

A quote ascribed to Karl Marx has been popping up a lot lately:

“Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.”

— Karl Marx, 1867, Das Kapital

That quote is almost assuredly bogus. We haven’t tormented ourselves by re-reading sections of Capital (Das Kapital). Once in college was enough. This quote, though, has been making the rounds on the Internet, as if Marx and his minions somehow knew all this was coming.

Whether the analysis is accurate is a separate question from whether Marx ever wrote it. German is a torturous language to read in translation, full of compound sentences and words. And it’s highly unlikely, writing in the late 19th century, that Marx would have referred to the working class buying houses and technology. The horseless carriage hadn’t even been invented yet, much less the iPod, the BlueRay, or the George Foreman grill.

Nope. This is a clever bit of revisionism by some unemployed Marxist student or tenured professor trying to discredit the free market while rehabilitating the Marxist playbook. Marx did indeed say capitalism would eventually evolve into socialism and finally communism. He claimed it was riddled by contradictions which made the system inherently unstable.

But his theory was evolutionary, based on his views of human nature and a rational “homo economicus.” Like Adam Smith, Marx was a materialist who defined wealth in terms of physical goods. Thus, his view of human nature is rather material too, which explains his atheism.

In any event, the Austrians (especially Rothbard) would point out that the boom-bust feature of capitalist economies is not inherent in the system, but is actually a product of the government’s manipulation of interest rates. This changes the price of money and causes risk-taking entrepreneurs to miscalculate the underlying demand for their production.

Thus, you get a massive, credit-induced production bubble, global in scale with resources devoted to supplying a fictional demand. It happened with residential real estate in the U.S. and Europe. It’s happened with commercial real estate in China. And it probably happened all along the commodity supply chain, as raw material demand increased for the production of finished goods made in China for Americans who bought on credit.

That isn’t to say you wouldn’t have normal cycles of growth and recession in an economy with natural interest rates. But in an economy with natural interest rates, the cost of capital would go up during a recession. Bankers would get more prudent with their lending as the market place sorted out which lending resulted in productive new enterprise and which businesses failed.

The bad investments would be written down and eventually new demand for capital from entrepreneurs would resume. At least, that’s how the Austrians drew it up. Today, of course, we are engaged in the great global project of trying to prop up investments gone bad, whether they be in residential American real estate or the collateralised bonds based on that real estate that currently reside like dead weight on balance sheets all over the globe.

No amount of rearranging is going to improve the quality of those debts. But that won’t keep political busy bodies from trying — and wasting even more time and capital.

Stocks in the U.S. were up overnight. Here in Australia, the blind are following where the deaf boldly lead. But is anyone listening? Or is everyone too busy hoping?

What we’re talking about are Ben Bernanke’s comments. The news headlines read that he predicted the recession will end later this year and the American economy will recover in 2010. But that’s not exactly what he said.

Here exactly is what he said, “If actions taken by the Administration, the Congress, and the Federal Reserve are successful in restoring some measure of financial stabilityand only if that is the case, in my viewthere is a reasonable prospect that the current recession will end in 2009 and that 2010 will be a year of recovery.”

If you wanted to put it another way, it might go like this: If our plan is successful to solve all the problems, then all the problems will have been successfully solved according to the plan.

How inspiring is that? Does it give you confidence that these guys have any idea what they’re doing?

What the system needs is more instability, not less. That is, prices and asset values need to fall to their real level to restore confidence. In this sense, a proper recession is the cure for uncertainty and instability.

Yes, we know this is in direct contradiction to what elected officials are telling you. But think for a moment of a man who’s done nothing but eat greasy and fatty foods for a year. He’s on his deathbed. His arteries are clogged with fat and cholesterol.

Now you couldn’t improve the man’s health by telling him to feel better about himself. “C’mon big fella. Buck up! Have another cheeseburger. With bacon. And avocado. This whole being morbidly obese and killing yourself thing is all in your head. You gotta get your mind right!”

You could tell him all that. But it would be bad medical advice. In the same way, our financial mal-practitioners have mis-diagnosed the economy. Confidence is not the problem. Bad credits and loans are the problem.

You restore confidence when you directly address the problem. Investors get out of cash and back into shares or property when they have demonstrable proof that the banks aren’t hiding/lying any longer.

Or, as Murray Rothbard puts it in America’s Great Depression, “The completion of liquidation removes the uncertainties of impending bankruptcy and ends the borrowers’ scramble for cash. A rapid unhampered fall in prices, both in general, and particularly in goods of higher orders (adjusting to the mal-investments of the boom) will speedily end the realignment processes and remove expectations of further declines.”

But instead of realigning with economic reality, our policy makers are acting as if it is possible to sustain all the bad investments made during the credit boom. They want to save homeowners, shareholders, bondholders, and pretty much anyone who stands to lose from the risks gone bad.

That is not possible. Someone has to pay for the bad bets made in subprime loans, Eastern Europe, or the developing world. That someone is probably a) the guy who took out the mortgage he can’t repay, b) the bank who made the loan to the guy who took out the mortgage he can’t repay, c) the investor who bought the bond sold by the bank who made the loan to the guy who took out the mortgage he can’t repay.

Evading responsibility for one’s actions doesn’t solve anything. Making other people pay for them doesn’t help much either. Of course we’re all going to pay for it one way or another, through more bailouts or the general contraction in credit and growth that has to come during the “realignment process.”

But those appear to be the two choices: allow failure, which allocates resources from the bad debts and losers to those who can produce real wealth. Or, try to “stabilize” any inherently unstable situation (perpetuating asset values after the credit spigot has been turned off).

Source:  Whiskey and Gunpowder