03/12/15

Trevor Loudon tells enthralled Marin County audience that victory in 2016 requires uniting and inspiring conservative base

Bookworm Room

Trevor_Loudon_2_smallTrevor Loudon spoke today to a sold-out room of Marin County conservatives anxious to hear the truth about the Democrat party and to get a prescription for the path to victory in 2016. Trevor, a dynamic speaker from New Zealand, loves America both because of gratitude and hope. He’s grateful to America because it was American sailors and Marines who fought so valiantly against the Japanese at Midway, Guadalcanal, and so many other battles in the Pacific, saving New Zealand from being conquered by Japan.

Trevor also believes that, as Reagan said, America is “the last best hope for a mankind plagued by tyranny and deprivation.” With America gone, the world’s dictators, from oligarchs, to communists, to Islamists, will divvy the world up amongst them, leading to a thousand years of darkness for people who once unthinkingly and rather ungratefully enjoyed the benefits of an enlightened world.

Looking at the inroads these tyrants have made under the Obama administration, only a fool would believe that Trevor is exaggerating. Indeed, Trevor reminded us that, from practically his first day in office, Obama has relentlessly abandoned America’s allies to make way for her enemies. As you may recall, Obama immediately began to withdraw the missile defense systems that protected our middle European allies from Russian aggression on the Eastern fronts. Not surprisingly, giving Obama’s tacit permission, Russia has now been aggressive.

Likewise, even though Ukraine gave up its missile defense in exchange for an explicit American promises of meaningful aid should the Russians cause trouble, Obama has contributed nothing meaningful to Ukraine’s defense in the face of Russian depredations. Indeed, the only thing we’ve given it is John Kerry, whom Trevor likened to Jane Fonda, only with less testosterone. Trevor noted that Obama’s accelerating active and passive abnegation of America’s long-time role as protector of smaller democratic (or democratically-inclined) nations could be seen predictable outcomes of Obama’s secret promise to Russia, made known only through a hot mic that, after the election, he’d have more “flexibility.”

It’s not just Eastern Europe that Obama has abandoned. He also turned his back on Egypt and other Arab nations tearing themselves away from theocracy and struggling towards democracy.  Don’t forget that Obama was the Muslim Brotherhood’s staunchest ally.  And we won’t even start talking about his frantic, angry efforts to isolate and abandon Israel, while handing Iran the keys to the nuclear kingdom.

Obama has waged a war on the US at home too. He’s in the process of gutting our military, he’s working to destroy our southern border, he’s kept us in the longest, weakest economy since the Great Depression, he’s strengthened Cuba’s dictatorship, and his justice system is systematically creating race and class warfare while destroying American’s constitutional protections. With regard to the military, Trevor asked rhetorically if any of us thought that Russia would have invaded Ukraine or if the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS would have been ascendant if Reagan had been president.

Looking at Obama’s conduct, Trevor said that people who claim Obama is stupid are wrong. After all, he said, if Obama were just stupid, wouldn’t he sometimes make mistakes in America’s favor? The reality is that, if Obama were a fully paid Russian agent, he would be doing exactly the same things he’s doing today.

I agree with Trevor. I’ve concluded that Obama, while uneducated, is extremely intelligent and adept at manipulating the American political system, with a lot of help from media ideologues.  (Which raises the question of what you call a nation under the tyranny of the press.  A mediagarchy?  When the history books are written, assuming America has a history after Obama, our president will be rightly identified as one of America’s most consequential presidents.  The problem for those of us who love a constitutional America is that Obama’s very real successes are all aimed at turning America into another Venezuela, complete with a broken marketplace, despite vast natural and human resources, ruled over by a corrupt cabal of party insiders and crony capitalists.  And now back to Trevor….

What makes Obama tick? Communism, says Trevor — and Trevor, the man who outed Van Jones and the Obama/Frank Marshall Davis connection, knows communists.

You know what’s really funny? Trevor knows communists because they leave a huge bread crumb trail.  Old communists, wanting to preserve their legacies, turn their photos and documents over to university libraries in Berkeley, and Ann Arbor, and Madison, and all sorts of other Leftist bastions. It is, says Trevor, kind of like the Mafia leaving its records to the local library.

Trevor has visited these library collections and found hundreds of contemporaneous records: essays, photographs, correspondence, membership cards in various communist entities, political platforms, five- and ten-year plans . . . everything, all of which Trevor has photocopied. He joked that, despite their donating their stuff to libraries, it seems that the old commies are so arrogant they think that no one will ever actually use the information against them.

Trevor’s research has brought him to two primary conclusions:

  1. Like the Devil, the communists’ greatest feat is convincing people that they don’t exist.
  2. It takes only a very, very small cadre of Marxists to influence and ultimately control legislators.  As a result, they write the laws and administrative codes that dictate our country’s and our people’s future.

The communists’ big moment came in 1995 when no one was looking.  That was the year that the Democratic Socialists of America, a communist group, put one of their own — John Sweeney — in as head of the AFL-CIO. Overnight, the AFL-CIO, an organization that was once ferociously anti-communist and that opposed amnesty because it would hurt working Americans, turned into a pro-communist, pro-amnesty group.

More than that, through the AFL-CIO, communists suddenly owned Congress. After all, unions (headed by the SEIU, which outspends the next two donor organizations which are also Leftist) are the largest contributors to Democrat politicians.  These politicians, in exchange for money and political “guidance” turn around and shovel funds directly to government unions and indirectly to private-sector unions.  The unions then reward the politicians whom they own, and so it goes. The spigot of taxpayer money flows directly to the groups that are working to destroy our constitutional system.  The only people who aren’t at the table for these negotiations are the taxpayers whose money ultimately funds the unions’ hard-Left game plan.

Over the past 20 years, the unions’ biggest push has been for amnesty, something that, as I noted, the old unions viewed with revulsion as a job destroyer. The new guard, however, understands that amnesty is the pathway to a permanent Democrat majority. Keep in mind the fact that Mitt lost the presidency by only 2.5 million votes, while amnesty promises 8 million or more permanent Democrat votes. (And yes, while Hispanic family values ought to make them side with conservatives, the fact is that they overwhelmingly vote for the same Democrats that slice and dice them by race and create financial incentives that keep them locked in the ghetto.)

Sadly, when it comes to amnesty, the communists and Democrats don’t act alone.  They get way too much help from the Chamber of Commerce, which owns Boehner and Co.  Thus, in a marvel of shortsightedness, the Chamber of Commerce types see these new immigrants as a source of cheap labor that maximizes profits, without understanding that they’re also the socialist wedge that will destroy capitalism.  As Lenin presciently said, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

Lest you think that Trevor is connecting imaginary dots with invisible lines, remember the treasure troves in the library.  he’s got first person data to support every one of his allegations.

Thanks to his research, Trevor can name the five most powerful forces in the amnesty movement. The godfather of the movement was the late Humberto Noé “Bert” Corona, a Stalinist and Democrat who started the amnesty movement in Los Angeles in the 1950s. He was also the one who brought the wealth and moral suasion of the Catholic Church  — which was already being moved Left by the Liberation theology movement — to back amnesty. Corona’s goal wasn’t to save souls, though.  He wanted to and did grow a permanent Democrat voting base in California.

The next important person in the amnesty movement was Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, and the one who turned L.A. into a sanctuary city that no longer worked to deport illegal aliens (which was still something of a novel idea as little as a decade ago). Approximately 1/10 of all Los Angeles residents are now illegal aliens and beneficiaries of amnesty. (I’ve also been told by a reliable source that, thanks to this influx, a significant number of American-born L.A. Unified School District teachers test positive for TB, although they’re not actively ill.)

The third person behind amnesty is Gilbert Anthony Cedillo, the major player in California’s Democrat Senate. It was Cedillo who got the DREAM Act passed in California.  It put California taxpayers on the hook for funding college education for illegal aliens, all while squeezing students in America legally out of the education system.

California also boasts the fourth amnesty powerhouse, Marie Elena Durazo, Executive Secretary and Treasurer of the Los Angeles County AFL-CIO. She is the person behind “get out the vote” efforts for Latinos — legal or illegal.

These four people have made sure that California, which brings the largest number of electoral votes to the table in presidential elections, will be solid blue for the indefinite future. Looking outside of California, SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina is on Obama’s Latino Advisory Committee and was the most aggressive proponent of amnesty (not that Obama was hard to convince).  Medina is one of those working to get Hispanics the vote in Texas.

If Texas goes as blue as California, thanks to all those reliable Democrat votes, Democrats will have a permanent lock on the electoral college and, through that, a lock on the White House. Moreover, that permanent lock will come after Obama has set the precedent for unilateral executive action without regard for Congressional powers.

Incidentally, the union chiefs are open about their goals, although most of the rank and file are ignorant of this. Contrary to what ordinary union members assume, which is that their unions are looking out for them, the union movement, having been taken over by hard-core socialists, has only one goal: a permanent, hard-Left Democrat political majority. Three years ago, Medina was caught on tape telling supporters that the amnesty movement is the top priority of the Progressive movement. Note that the union’s priority isn’t the American worker, who’s getting screwed by amnesty. The union’s priority is permanent Leftist dominant.  Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your freedom and the road to prosperity.

Soft-headed Liberals, those who claim to be the heirs of Truman and Kennedy, envision a sort of loving Leftism, kind of like Europe during the heyday of the 1970s.  Think again, says Trevor. What we should expect is Venezuela-style socialism.

(Note from me, Bookworm: Europe’s socialism worked for only one reason and it wasn’t that it was such a wonderful deal helped along by morally superior Europeans.  It worked because Americans funded it. Not only did we relieve the European nations of having to front a military to defend themselves against the Soviet Union, we sent them a lot of cold, hard cash. They were socialists because we wrote the checks. With the official Cold War over and America out of the picture, you can see in Spain and Greece and Italy and throughout Europe just how well non-American socialism is working.)

This is depressing, really depressing, but Trevor said be of good cheer. We’re at one of those turning points in history where things are worse than most of actually realize but, if we make the right choices, we’re trembling on the brink of making things better than ever — even better than when Reagan was president.

Think back to 2008, he said. Back then, the Left had a slam dunk. The party owned everything in Washington. In theory, it should have gotten every single one of its agenda items. But it didn’t. Even Obamacare was a bizarre crony-capitalist compromise, rather than the full socialized medicine the Left wanted.

What stopped the Left in its tracks was “We, the People.” The Tea Party movement, a true grass-roots movement, was the voice of the people saying “We still want to be free. We don’t want to be cogs in the government’s wheel.” Amateurs and novices all over America spoke out and stopped the fruition of a decades’ long agenda. As Trevor says, “I think the Tea Party saved America.”

So, what next? Trevor says that 2016 is our last chance. If the Democrats take back Congress and keep the White House in 2016, especially with Obama’s executive overreach as precedent, we can expect the quick legalization of every illegal immigrant followed by the destruction of the Bill of Rights. Venezuela here we come. (Incidentally, Trevor says the Left is committing a terrible fraud against Hispanics. It entices them here with the American promise, but it’s actually using their presence to turn America into precisely the same poverty-stricken dictatorships the Hispanics thought they were escaping.)

History, however, offers a useful precedent for conservatives in America. In 1976, the mandarins of the GOP looked at Ronald Reagan, an up-and-coming California politician, and decided he was toxic. Too extreme, they said. We need someone moderate, someone like Gerald Ford (a good man, but a lousy conservative politician). And so it was that Jimmy Carter became president — or, as Trevor said, Carter became the second-worst president in American history.

Reagan, however, didn’t give up, nor did his supporters. Rather than abandoning the GOP, which has a very useful infrastructure, conservatives took it over, just as the Leftists have taken over Truman’s and Kennedy’s Democrat Party. By 1980, the man who was considered so toxic the GOP wouldn’t touch him won 48 states.

What made the difference was that Reagan bypassed the media and, with his incredible oratorical gifts, spoke directly to the American people. Nor did he just pick and choose which conservatives ought to support him. He was truly a Big Tent guy, making all traditionally patriotic, conservative Americans feel welcome in his coalition.

Nowadays, the conservative base is incredibly divided — and you can’t win an election without your base. Currently, the GOP machinery is throwing itself behind Jeb Bush, someone loved only by the Chamber of Commerce, the same group backing Boehner’s amnesty sell-out. While Jeb is almost certainly a good human being, he can’t even spark a fizzle in the base. Conservatives hate his politics.

Trevor envisions a coalition in the coming election. His dream ticket is

  1. Ted Cruz as President, with Allen West as his Vice President.
  2. Rand Paul as Treasury Secretary, with permission to shackle the IRS and free the US economy.
  3. Sarah Palin as Energy Secretary, with a mandate to drill, baby, drill.
  4. Scott Walker as labor secretary, working to de-fang the unions that have become so hostile to the American workers.
  5. Michelle Bachman as Commerce Secretary, tasked with deregulation so that rules exist to police bad behavior, not to drive all market behavior.
  6. Mike Lee as Interior Secretary, charged with giving back to the states all the land the federal government has seized.
  7. John Bolton as Secretary of State, which would be a whole lot of fun.
  8. Ben Carson as be Secretary of Health and Human Services, freeing Americans from the moral horrors of unlimited welfare.
  9. Trey Gowdy as Attorney General, bringing justice back to our electoral process and the Bill of Rights back to our politics.
  10. Thomas Sowell as Secretary of Education, un-ringing the Common Core bell and leaving home schooling families alone.

Oh, and Ambassador to the UN? No one, said Trevor, to laughter and applause.

People raised concerns, of course. I pointed out that we have a primary system that will see many of these same people standing in a circular firing squad against each other, as each tries to grasp the gold ring of the presidency himself (or herself). Trevor acknowledged this, but said that, if one person isn’t polling well, wouldn’t it be a huge thing if someone who is in the lead — say Cruz — went up to him and said, “Give up this quixotic quest. Instead of running for president, join me.  I’m going to give you this incredible power to change the thing most important to you.”

Someone else pointed out that Scott Walker has governing experience and is currently riding high amongst conservatives. Trevor agreed that Walker is a great guy and said that, if Walker gets the Republican party nomination, he’ll back him all the way. But this election, said Trevor, isn’t about issues, it’s about INSPIRATION. And Walker, for all his many virtues, doesn’t rouse a room. The only one who does that is Ted Cruz, with Allen West standing right behind him in that regard. (Note from me: Sarah Palin also rouses a room, but I think her day is gone.)  You know that I think well of Cruz.

Imagine, Trevor said, a barnstormer like Cruz who has in his wake 15 or 20 rock-solid conservatives, all of whom will willingly serve in his administration, and whom are advocating the same ticket. The media would go crazy because it would destroy their ability to isolate, freeze, and destroy the target. Instead, they’d be aiming pop guns at a battleship.

Most importantly, this ticket would play beautifully to the broad spectrum of the conservative base. Just as their leaders — the libertarians, and Christians, and homeschoolers, and free-marketers — are pulling together, so would the voters. In this regard, said Trevor, keep in mind the fact that in the last election millions of evangelicals, as well as a few million others disgruntled conservatives, stayed home.

Of course, some people are worried about making common cause with others.  They needn’t be, because true conservativism says that the government shouldn’t put its thumb on the scales for any one group.  For example, those libertarians who are worried about making common cause with evangelicals can relax.  The new breed of evangelicals don’t want to change the world; they just want to be left alone to educate their children, without having them forced into Leftist run public schools, and run their own business, without being forced into state-mandated education for the crime of holding onto their traditional moral beliefs.

Importantly, Trevor said to the conservatives in the room, stop trying to convert Leftists. You can’t make enough difference to change the 2016 outcome. Work on your own base. Conservatives have a much larger base than Leftists do but, lately, we have a lousy track record at getting them to the polls.

Trevor made a few other important points that I want to share with you. When someone asked why the Left so desperately wants to destroy America’s wealth and beauty, and drag it towards a Venezuela outcome, he said some are ideologues, but many are all about the power of Leftism. They like being able to control people and feel superior to them. They are, he said, the bullies almost all of us hated back in high school — yet many Americans are willing to cede them power today.

And speaking of power, Trevor said that there’s been an important and dangerous power shift emanating from the Justice Department. He noted that Ferguson is a trial run for the Left, and that we need to prepare for much, much worse every time another black kid gets killed at a white person’s hands — and that’s true no matter the reason for the kids’ death.

America has seen race riots before, of course, but there’s a significant difference now: In the 1960s and 1970s, the government supported law and order. Under Holder, the government supports the radicals and the rioters. Think about that next time you wonder whether it’s even worth bothering to vote in 2016.

Here’s something else that will cheer you up: Trevor is making a movie called “Exposing the Enemy Within.” It will be a hard-hitting, factually-supported movie based upon his book, THE ENEMIES WITHIN: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress. It will come out in Fall 2015, and should be available in Netflix. Trevor’s hope is that it will make people see the abyss in front of them and inspire them to act. Again, there are more conservatives in America than not — they’re just not voting!  if you’re interested helping bring that movie to theaters and home videos, you can donate here.  (Don’t be dismayed by the small amount of  money on display there.  Trevor has already started the project with the help of a few big donors.)

When Trevor finished his speech, the room gave him a standing ovation. Our own Charles Martell [sic] was there, and he clapped so hard his armor rattled! It’s time for us all to start clapping now. This election isn’t about the Leftist drone on your Facebook page; it’s about your lovely evangelical next door neighbor who hopes that, if he ignores elections, elections will ignore him. That’s not how it happens. If he really wants to be left alone, he needs to vote for the Republican candidate, or he’ll have the dubious pleasure of becoming yet another martyr to his faith in the Leftist-led culture wars.

ADDENDUM:  If you get word that Trevor’s coming to your town, make the time to attend his talk.  You won’t regret it.  Also, if you’d like to have at your fingertips the same facts on which Trevor relies, check out his KeyWiki (or even make a donation to its upkeep).

03/12/15

Duty to Country Is Deadly Business

By: Frank Salvato

I awoke to the news that 7 Marines and 4 Army soldiers went missing, all presumed dead, after a special operations training mission helicopter crashed not far from where I live; not far from the pristine beach where I took the picture that sits atop my Facebook page. It is a sober reminder that those who volunteer to place themselves in harm’s way; between the evil and the innocent, face dangers even as they train to protect the nation they serve and the innocent they swear to protect.

ABC’s WEAR Channel 3 in Pensacola reports:

“Seven Marines and four soldiers went missing early Wednesday after an Army helicopter crashed during a night training exercise at Eglin Air Force Base in Navarre.

“Defense officials say the military members aboard the aircraft are presumed dead. Heavy fog is having an impact on recovery efforts. Human remains have washed up on shore but the number of remains has not be released at this time. This is still considered a search and rescue mission…Pentagon officials say the heavy fog played a role in the crash.”

In a time when the chattering class demands that we debate the ideological genesis of the deadly threat to our nation – and Western Civilization – emanating from the Middle East, it would well serve our nation’s collective soul to personalize not only the seriousness of the threat, but the guardians of our nation; the rough and ready men and women who step into the coarse void between the way of life afforded us by the American dream and the oppression and cruelty many around the world would love to inflict upon us.

When we have the courage to confront and accept the truth, it is undeniable that there are vicious zealots committing atrocities; crimes against humanity, in the name of Islam. Yet, some among us in the West; some whose ideological addictions force them to see everything through a morally relativistic lens, seek to designate our nation as one of many among equals; our military personnel as simple countermeasures to enemies who have equal claim to ideological and moral legitimacy. But this stunted line of thinking couldn’t be further from the truth and, in fact, serves as a smear against the brave men and women of the US Armed Forces; our sentinels who stand between “the barbarians and the gate.” I know this to be true because my wife and I live among them; we know them and love them like family.

Our enemies, those who willingly join the ranks of Daesh (the Islamic State, al Qaeda, Boko Haram, al Shabab, etc.), execute barbaric acts of tyranny in the name of their religion, committing unspeakable acts of ferocious cruelty in an effort to either convert the un-Islamic or cleanse the earth of those who refuse their dictate, all in an aggressive pursuit of global domination.

The men and women of the United States Armed Forces, in extreme contrast, step into the ugly void of a no-man’s land where the weak and oppressed suffer at the hands of tyrants; a land where the cowardly fear to tread. They inject themselves into situations to free the oppressed, to preserve the liberty of the innocent and to vanquish the tyrannical. And as they do they carry with them the moral clarity that understands “good versus evil”; “right verses wrong”; “duty, honor, country,” lessons gleaned from the righteousness of the American dream, not the ideological clap-trap of theorists hell-bent on believing in the impossibility of global utopia, or the manipulation of political creatures questing for power, influence and fame.

Our military men and women are sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, and neighbors. They go to the store for food, they fill-up their cars with gas, they help their children with their school work, they laugh, and the cry, just like those who do not serve. They cut their grass, they take out their garbage, they pay their taxes and they socialize. The live, laugh and love. But sometimes when they kiss their spouses goodbye at the door; sometimes when they kiss their children good night; sometimes when they promise to be back in a few days, sometimes those kisses are their last and those promises to return are broken, not of their own commission, but because their call to duty, their call to serve, sent them on a path that does not return home.

So it is with the 7 Marines and 4 US Army soldiers who kissed their loved ones goodbye with every intention of returning in a few days. So it is with many military families who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

A close friend of mine who teaches at a military special operations school wrote me after I queried him about the training accident. He closed by saying, “This business is a dangerous business.” Indeed it is. It is dangerous and it is necessary. It is necessary for the longevity of liberty and freedom. And it is rightly necessary for all of us to thank and honor them for their sacrifices; honor them like family, because they protect us like we are family.

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director of BasicsProject.org a grassroots, non-partisan, research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy, and internal and external threats facing Western Civilization. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His opinion and analysis have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times, The Jewish World Review, Accuracy in Media, Human Events, Townhall.com and are syndicated nationally. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is the author of six books examining Islamofascism and Progressivism, including “Understanding the Threat of Radical Islam”. Mr. Salvato’s personal writing can be found at FrankJSalvato.com.

03/12/15

Catholic Church Captured by “Progressive Forces”

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Armando Valladares, Castro’s political prisoner for 22 years, said his Catholic faith was strengthened behind bars by hearing young Catholics shouting “Viva Cristo Rey,” for “Long Live Christ the King,” and “down with communism!” as they faced the firing squad. It has been his hope that Cuba would one day be free of communism. But he is far less hopeful now that Pope Francis has taken measures that he says “objectively favor the political and ecclesiastical left in Latin America” and could undermine the “Christian future of the Americas.”

Meanwhile, Marxist writer Richard Greeman has written an extraordinary article, “Catholicism: The New Communism?,” arguing that “progressive forces” have  “captured” the Vatican, and that Francis is conducting a “purge” of traditional elements, such as those loyal to anti-communist Pope John Paul II.

Valladares, author of Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulag, was the United States Ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission under the Reagan and Bush administrations. He writes in a recent column that Francis was the “most eminent architect and mediator” of the Obama administration deal with Cuba that will “now provide the repressive apparatus of the Cuban regime with rivers of money and favorable publicity.”

He goes on, “We are witnessing one of the greatest examples of media sleights-of-hand in history: From a well-deserved image of aggressor, a regime which for decades spearheaded bloody revolutions in Latin America and Africa and continues to spread its tentacles in the three Americas, has been craftily made to look like a victimized underdog.”

He says the responsibility lies with the unexpected rise of a Francis-Obama “axis” in foreign affairs that benefits Marxist governments throughout Latin America.

Valladares, who received the Citizen’s Presidential Medal from President Ronald Reagan, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in communist Cuba in 1960 for being philosophically and religiously opposed to communism. He was tortured and kept in isolation for refusing to be “re-educated.” He was released after 22 years in prison, in 1982, when international pressure was brought to bear on the regime.

Valladares says it’s not just the Cuba betrayal that concerns him. He notes that Francis overturned the suspension of Nicaraguan priest Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, a former communist Sandinista foreign minister and a leading pro-Castro figure in liberation theology.

Despite his credentials as a political prisoner turned human rights activist and powerful voice for freedom, his column on the Obama-Francis “axis” has received very little attention. An associate says it seems “too politically incorrect,” an apparent reference to the fact that Francis is a global media star for identifying with the poor, and that liberals and conservatives alike are reluctant to criticize him.

Valladares, however, says the pope has gone far beyond taking up the cause of poor people. His column notes that Francis personally attended something called the World Meeting of Popular Movements last October in Rome. “It gathered 100 revolutionary world leaders, including well-known Latin American professional agitators,” Valladares points out. “The meeting turned out to be a kind of marketing ‘beatification’ of these Marxist-inspired revolutionary figures.”

One of the participants in the Vatican event was Evo Morales, the Marxist President of Bolivia who dedicated his election victory last year to Cuba’s Fidel Castro and the late Venezuelan Marxist ruler, Hugo Chávez.

The Vatican’s own description of the meeting referred to changing “an economy of exclusion” and “an idolatrous system of money.” The statement went on, “Together we want to discuss the structural causes of so much inequality (inequidad) which robs us of work (labor), housing (domus) and land (terra), which generates violence and destroys nature. We also want to face the challenge Francis himself sets puts [sic] to us with courage and intelligence: to seek radical proposals to resolve the problems of the poor.”

Valladares isn’t the only one to notice the “radical” or leftward drift of the papacy. Greeman’s article wondering if Catholicism is the “new communism” appears in New Politics, a socialist magazine “committed to the advancement of the peace and anti-intervention movements” and which “stands in opposition to all forms of imperialism…”

New Politics has strong links to the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that backed Barack Obama’s political career from the start. Its “sponsors” include Noam Chomsky, Frances Fox Piven, Michael Eric Dyson, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West and the late communist historian Howard Zinn.

Greeman notes that the world’s Catholic Bishops have “explicitly pointed to capitalism as the basic cause of impending global catastrophe,” in the form of climate change, and have “called for a new economic order.” He was referring to a group of Catholic Bishops who met at the U.N. climate talks last December and blamed “the dominant global economic system, which is a human creation,” for global warming. They argued for “a new financial and economic order” and the phasing out of the use of fossil fuels.

Greeman says the Bishops’ attack on capitalism was generally ignored, even on the left, and he understands why. There have been so many “rapid changes” coming out of Rome “since the ascension to the Throne of Saint Peter” by Pope Francis that it is hard to keep up with them, he says.

Francis will issue a Vatican document, known as an encyclical, on climate change in June or July.

Greeman writes that these “radically anti-capitalist Catholic positions” have got him wondering whether Catholicism is “the new Communism,” Rome “the new Moscow,” and the church “the new Comintern.” The term “Comintern” refers to the Communist International, an association of national communist parties started by Lenin.

Growing up as a “red diaper baby” during the Cold War, Greeman writes, Catholicism was “synonymous with militant anti-Communism.” But changes that started coming years ago in the church have been accelerating under Francis, he writes. He attributes some of this “change” to Francis, who is from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a Jesuit, which is a “progressive” religious order whose “solid organization and discipline” and “attempts to take over the Church” go back centuries.

Greeman refers to the Catholic or “universal” Church as “the only actually existing organized world-party,” whose “vast wealth and influence are now in Francis’ hands.” He writes about “the capture” of the church by “progressive forces,” a development which opens up “huge possibilities for human liberation and perhaps a chance for the planet to avoid climate catastrophe.” He believes Francis “and his allies” are now conducting a “purge of the apparatus” in the Vatican.

Writing in Links, an international socialist journal, Canadian activist Judith Marshall discusses meeting the pope during the World Meeting of Popular Movements and witnessing his presentation to the group. “Pope Francis’ forthright statements on the social ministry of the church hearken back to the 1960s and 1970s when liberation theology was such a dynamic force in promoting struggles for social justice, particularly in Latin America,” she wrote. “The symbolism of a World Meeting of Popular Movements which brought a multitude of the poor right into [the] heart of the Vatican has not been lost on those looking for a resurgence of liberation theology.”

Liberation theology was manufactured by the old KGB to dupe Christians into supporting Marxism.

She also insisted that Francis “has arguably made the Papacy the most radical and consistent voice in pointing to the profanity of global inequality and exclusion. He has also repeatedly named the inordinate power of multinational corporations and finance capital as key factors in reproducing global poverty and destruction of the planet.”

She says Francis met with several Marxist activists from Latin America and even met privately with President Morales of Bolivia who “stressed how Mother Earth had become ill from capitalism,” and that “under the prevailing global economy, the planet would actually do better without humans—but humans need the planet.”

In a previous meeting Morales told the pope, “For me, you are brother Francis.” The pope responded, “As it should be, as it should be.”

03/12/15

John Kerry’s ‘Nonbinding’ Agreeability with Iran Demonstrates our Conspiracy-Incompetence Maxim

Gulag Bound

Never ascribe to only conspiracy, that which may also be incompetence,
and vice versa.

Or, said another way…

Never presume that conspiracy and incompetence are mutually exclusive,
without due evidence.

Kerry-John-3-1-12

DougRoss@Journal

BECAUSE, CRUSADES: Kerry, State Department Agree That any Iran Deal Would Be “Non-Binding”

By The Tower

Over the past two days, both U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki have admitted that the current nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran is “non-binding.”

Speaking at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today, Kerry said that the deal is not “legally binding.”

“We’ve been clear from the beginning we’re not negotiating a legally binding plan. We’re negotiating a plan that will have a capacity for enforcement,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“We don’t even have diplomatic relations with Iran right now.”

Kerry made his remarks in the context of addressing what he called the “misconceptions” contained in the open letter released earlier this week that was signed by 47 Senators.

In an exchange with reporters at yesterday’s daily State Department press conference, Psaki was asked how the deal could be non-binding if the United States does not trust Iran. The video is embedded below the transcript.

QUESTION: The problem is is that you’ve stressed over and over again this is not about trusting, right? This is about verifying. But then you’re saying that these are political commitments but not necessarily binding. It would seem to me that if this wasn’t about trust, you would want them to be binding, not political commitments, which are your word. That’s what a political —

MS. PSAKI: Well, Brad, we’re talking about specifically how pieces —

QUESTION: Political commitment just means “I will do this.”

MS. PSAKI: It is not that. We’re talking about how specifically pieces would be agreed to between the parties. In terms of the implementation of it, I’m sure we will talk about that at the time we would have an agreement.

QUESTION: Since I don’t understand then what a political – as I understand a political commitment, it means a person or a political entity saying, “I will do this; I commit to doing this.” How is that not anything other than giving your word?

MS. PSAKI: Well, again, Brad, if we get to the point where we have a framework, where we have an agreement, I’m sure we will have a discussion about how things will be implemented.

QUESTION: I’m just asking for the concept of political commitment. What does that mean, beyond giving your word?

MS. PSAKI: I just gave you additional examples of how that has been implemented and how it has worked in the past.

QUESTION: The Iranians have talked about this, whatever it is, that if anything happens, that it being – the idea that the UN Security Council would at least endorse it if not enshrine it in some kind of a resolution. Is that something that you think would be useful?

MS. PSAKI: I’m just not going to get ahead of how this would be implemented at this point in time.

QUESTION: So —

MS. PSAKI: Obviously, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done between now and then.


Last week, Armin Rosen of Business Insider reported that the non-binding nature of the deal was “one of the more curious yet least commented-upon aspects” of the nuclear negotiations with Iran.

In October, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration was pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran that would avoid the Senate altogether. That means that the deal would technically be an “executive agreement” in which the president reaches an understanding with a foreign government that doesn’t require any changes in US law — rather than a treaty, which requires a 2/3 majority in the Senate and could supersede certain laws.

The trouble is that Congress has passed numerous sanctions bills relating to Iran. And while Obama has the right to grant sanctions waivers under certain circumstances, he doesn’t have the power to just take them off the books by decree.

“An executive agreement never overrides inconsistent legislation and is incapable of overriding any of the sanctions legislation,” says David Rivkin, a constitutional litigator with Baker Hostetler, LLP who served in the White House Counsel’s Office in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush Administrations. “A treaty that has been submitted for Senate’s advise and consent and if it’s self-executing could do that.”

There is strong bipartisan support for Congressional oversight of any nuclear deal reached with Iran, both within Congress and among voters. The non-binding aspect to the deal is a way to bypass that oversight.

[Photo: Senate Foreign Relations Committee ]

Read more at TheTower.org

——GB——

One more note from the Gulag: Remember, we’re talking about this guy.

Kerry-Taylor-friend

Well… and this one.

Obama-shooter

Meanwhile, back in reality…

Iran Declares Pre-emptive Victory in Nuke Talks

H/T for this Free Beacon story: Denise Simon, @spongedocks

03/12/15

The 2nd Amendment Assault Continues

By: T F Stern
T F Stern’s Rantings

AmmoAfter reading the title of a recent news article entitled, Government backs off from banning assault rifle bullet, quite a bit of information is offered; some of which is intentionally misleading.  The article, which I’m sure has multiple variations scattered throughout the nation on virtually every media outlet,…where was I… the article claims that a public uprising has stemmed the government from stripping away yet another portion of our 2nd Amendment protection from government; that’s right, the 2nd Amendment was written to protect citizens from their government.

“Amid a massive outcry from gun enthusiasts, the government has backed away from a proposed ban on a specific bullet used in assault rifles that can pierce vests and body armor worn by police officers.”

For some reason a rifle which looks very similar to a military weapon in many ways has been allowed to be called an ‘assault rifle’ as if the AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle is the same as a fully automatic version the military uses.  The AR-15 is not an assault rifle; there isn’t such a thing, it’s a made up term.

Rifles are supposed to shoot ammunition; that’s about the extent of their purpose.  What the rifle is aimed at; now that becomes a decision of whoever is pointing the weapon.  Why a weapon is used is also up to that individual; it’s not up to anyone to presuppose a weapon’s purpose based on what it may or may not look like.

As for the kind of ammunition used in any given rifle, again, that is up to the individual based on purpose and how much the ammunition costs.

Unlike government agencies which have unlimited resources (taxpayers), individuals can’t buy up massive amounts of ammunition without considering the cost.  Then there’s the type of ammunition to consider; target practice ammo is considerably less expensive than ‘field ammo’ used to ‘inflict death and destruction’ on what ever target is picked.

That brings up a secondary topic; why did the Department of Homeland Security order over a billion and a half rounds of ammunition, to include several thousand rounds of hollow point ammo?  Hollow point ammo isn’t made for target practice and is intended to be used to ‘inflict death and destruction’.  The Department of Homeland Security has been telling the American public that the purchase was for training government employees?

“… at the height of the Iraq War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month.  Therefore 1.6 billion rounds would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years.  In America.”

I don’t recall ever getting a straight answer from the Department of Homeland Security.

The only logical explanation would be that the Department of Homeland Security was planning to go to war; and since they are tasked with policing Americans the logical answer would be that our government is planning to go to war against…you got it…its own citizens.  (look up the definition of tyranny).

Lethal Weapon 3Getting back to the original article on why the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) planned to ban a particular type of ammunition, their explanation was to “protect police officers”.   That’s interesting since, presumably, most of police officers targeted by ‘cop killer ammo’ were play actors in a movie, Lethal Weapon. 

There really is no factual basis for calling them ‘cop killer ammo’, it’s a myth; but for the same reason folks call the AR an ‘assault weapon’ these same folks think ‘cop killer ammo’ sounds more sinister.

“So what are the “cop killer” bullets now? According to the Brady Campaign, it is any hollowpoint bullet on the market. For those of you that don’t know what a hollowpoint bullet really does, it is designed so that it does not over penetrate instead relying on it doing more tissue damage and expending all of its kinetic energy inside the target. This means that is less likely to penetrate a vest than other solid bullets. Wait, I thought “cop killers” were designed to penetrate polices vests?  Well, it would seem once a bullet gets painted with the capricious “cop killer” brush, you don’t have to let a little things like “precedence” and “reality” get in your way.”

Even if there were ‘cop killer bullets’; and any bullet that strikes in the ‘right place’ is a killer, criminals who are intent on killing police officers would figure out how to obtain them.  Criminals haven’t been kept from obtaining heroin, cocaine or guns even though there are laws prohibiting these items.  Criminals don’t give a crap about the law, that’s why we call them criminals.  (news flash – neither do our elected representatives or those appointed to serve in government agencies)

I guess the ATF really wants to stop average law abiding citizens from purchasing lethal bullets, armor piercing bullets; oh why stop there; the ATF wants to eventually ban ALL bullets.  You can keep your guns; but they don’t operate without bullets.  There, now it’s ‘out there’ as Billy Crystal would say.  Once it’s out there, it’s out there.

George WashingtonThe message sent to Washington wasn’t from ‘gun enthusiasts’ as the article said; no, the message was sent from citizens who recognized that our government was attempting to whittle away an important part of the 2nd Amendment.  Our right to own and bear arms was specifically addressed because the Founding Fathers understood the biggest threat to liberty would come from an all powerful centralized government; something like we are quickly approaching.

If and when this monster sized central government turns on the citizenry, may it never happen in my lifetime; but if and when that happens citizens will be forced to use what ever weapons and ammunition they can lay their hands on.  It won’t matter if it’s a militarized police unit coming to remove ‘undesirables’ from society’ as was done in Pre-WWII NAZI Germany,  or if it’s your local Army Reserve Detail coming to haul right wing conservative nut jobs off to a FEMA camp.  The purpose of having a weapon and ammunition is to kill; there’s no nice way of saying it.

Our Declaration of Independence was issued as an open letter to a tyrannical King; but it applies equally to any tyrant with the intent and ability to enslave American citizens.  The time draws ever closer when citizens will be forced to defend against such tyranny.

This article has been cross posted to The Moral Liberal, a publication whose banner reads, “Defending The Judeo-Christian Ethic, Limited Government, & The American Constitution”.

03/12/15

Our Weasel Of The Week!! – 03/12/15

The Watcher’s Council

Every Tuesday, the Council nominates some of the slimiest, most despicable characters in public life for some deed of evil, cowardice or corruption they’ve performed. Then we vote to single out one particular Weasel for special mention, to whom we award the statuette of shame, our special, 100% plastic Golden Weasel. This week’s nominees were all truly slime-worthy and disgusting, but in the end, the unanimous winner was… the envelope please…


Mistress 0f E-Mails, Serial Liar, Benghazi Babe And A Law Unto Herself Hillary Clinton!!

The Noisy Room: My nomination this week is Hillary Clinton for her illegal email escapades. Hypocrisy, thy name is Hillary Clinton.

On June 20, 2007, Hillary Clinton whined and bloviated shrilly about Bush officials shredding the US Constitution by having secret email accounts. Not even two years later, as Secretary of State, Clinton set up a secret email account and secret servers in her basement for all of her official business to skirt federal law. The computer server that transmitted and received Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails traced back to an Internet service registered to her family’s home in Chappaqua, New York.

The Washington Post points out that this would give Clinton: (1) “impressive control over
limiting access to her message archives and (2) secretive email practices far more sophisticated than some politicians.€ Hillary is keeping mum on all of this and her silence is damning.

Hillary is a crafty weasel, she figures since she asked the State Department to release the 55,000 pages of emails she provided to the agency, that everything will quiet down. In fact, that is now her team’s strategy, to do nothing. It is a time-tested Clintonian approach: take a concrete step to ease the pressure, then sit back and wait it out.

You watch, she’ll pooh pooh this as a non-issue. That it is irrelevant – you know, like breaking the law always is for the Clintons. Unfortunately, for Hillary, this has legs and isn’t going away and won’t just fade off the radar either. Rumor has it, those email accounts that she has so carefully hid and labeled with pseudonyms, have been hacked. Huma Abedin is caught up in this as well. Those emails should finish the Hildebeast off if there is any justice in the universe. She is an accomplished weasel.

The Right Planet: Once again, when it comes to the Clintons, we see a classic example of the old “the rules don’t apply to me” schtick. Hillary Clinton not only refused to use an official government email address for her official communications when she was serving as Secretary of State, she went as far as to set up a private email server in her own home in an obvious effort to retain complete control over her all official communications. Why? What is she trying to hide? This seems to be a pattern with this administration (see former EPA head Lisa Jackson and her “Richard Windsor” email account).

I really can’t put it any better than “Zip” over at Weasel Zippers:

“So let’s review. [Hillary Clinton] violated the rules of her Department, violated the Federal Records Act, required employees to follow the rules and kicked one out for not following them, failed to respond to prior requests for the emails, and then when she finally turned over some, there were huge gaps of months missing. Now we don’t even know where the server she exposed all kinds of info on is, and how exposed it was to attack. Let’s elect this woman President, yay!”

Hillary Rodham Clinton  is more than just a mere weasel…she’s a Weasel Legend!; From her earliest days, she’s personified Weaselness. Sandy Koufax was born to pitch baseball,Mozart to compose music, Meryl Streep was born to act and Hillary was born to be a weasel superstar!

Such heady praise for the innate talent of one so young!

And than there was Whitewater, where Hillary escaped going to jail because while the prosecutor was able to prove she forged documents, there was no way to prove intent since Susan McDougal chose to do easy time, keep her mouth shut and sit in jail for a year and a half until she got a presidential pardon and undoubtedly, a little somethin’ somethin’ for her trouble.

Need we even mention her other weasel deeds during the Clinton Administration, her fairy tales of facing danger from Bosnia to Belfast, her perfidious performance as a U.S. senator, on the campaign trail in ’08 and then as Secretary of State? Her outright lies about Benghazi, not only to Congress, but to the very families of the men whom were murdered there… literally at their funerals?

And now, we find out that Mrs. Clinton – again – knowingly broke federal law, used a private e-mail server during her tenure at Secretary of State and very probably exposed classified material to espionage and hacking? Isn’t this the cherry on top of the Weasel sundae?

Why yes, a decent society might have driven her into the void like the hideous, corrupt harridan she is. But the Golden Weasel, after all, is an award for Weaselness. Mrs. Clinton is a master at the art, one of the all time champs. So, please step forward to the stage (or have Huma slither on over) to accept your Weasel.

Let us hear your hideous cackle as you revel in accepting this award. It might have been created with you in mind as its model recipient.

Well, there it is!

Check back next Tuesday to see who next week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week are!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum and remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere and you won’t want to miss it… or any of the other fantabulous Watcher’s Council content.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that, y’know?