05/18/16

Vermont College “Feels the Bern” and Closes

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

Bernie

The wife of the socialist candidate promising free college is being blamed for closing down a college in Vermont. Burlington College is going out of business, thanks to debt incurred under the leadership of its former president Jane Sanders, also known as “educator” Dr. Jane Sanders.

Alluding to the “Feel the Bern” rallying cry for the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the publication Politico noted that his wife had made a big-ticket purchase during her tenure as head of the small, private college in Vermont “and, in the end, the institution got burned.”

“Anything is Possible,” it says at the top of the Burlington College website. However, the Sanders’ socialist financial magic didn’t work at the college. It ran out of money, as socialists and their institutions usually do.

“Burlington College: Start a Fire” is the gimmicky slogan used to attract students to this unorthodox institution of higher learning. A fire sale would be more appropriate. It’s not clear how long the “Cuba Semester Abroad” program at Burlington College will continue. Officially, the college closes down on May 27.

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10/21/15

Selling Sanders, Socialism and Hypocrisy

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Millionaire businessman Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream was on CNN last week talking about his presidential candidate, career politician and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a “social democrat,” not a socialist. For his part, Cohen said, “You know, I’m a capitalist, clearly, and I support the guy.”

Capitalism has certainly been very good to Ben & Jerry. Their Vermont-based ice cream business is an American success story. But in 2012, they sold out to the British-Dutch conglomerate Unilever for a purchase price of $326 million. The result was that Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield became members of the one-tenth of one percent that Sanders rallies against. Cohen and Greenfield each has a reported net worth of $150 million.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the top one-tenth of one percent consists of 160,000 families with net assets of at least $20 million.

Unilever is worth $129 billion, according to Forbes magazine. Sounds like one of the big corporations Bernie should rail against.

During the Democratic presidential debate, Sanders said, “We’re gonna win because first, we’re gonna explain what democratic socialism is. And what democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of one percent in this country own almost 90 percent—almost—own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top one percent.”

He called for a tax on Wall Street but not ice cream to pay for the free college educations he’s proposing for students. But a Wall Street tax would affect the 55 percent of Americans who report having money invested in stocks.

A popular Bernie Sanders meme notes that while he claims to want to get money out of politics, he bribes people with the promise of government benefits in exchange for votes.

What is clear is that Sanders, a true socialist, believes Americans have too many choices, and that apparently the government must step in to regulate and determine what’s best for consumers. “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country,” he told CNBC. “I don’t think the media appreciates the kind of stress that ordinary Americans are working on.”

Unilever, which owns Ben & Jerry’s, produces many different kinds of deodorants. Labeled “The World’s No. 1 Antiperspirant” featuring “body-responsive antiperspirant technology,” Degree is available in a range of formats for men and women. They include:

  • Degree Men Dry Protection
  • Degree Men Fresh Deodorant
  • Degree Men Adrenaline Series
  • Degree Men Clinical Protection

Sanders hasn’t said anything about too many choices of ice cream. According to published reports, there are about 40 varieties of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream available in pint form. There are reportedly 159 ice cream brands available nationwide.

One could easily argue that underarm deodorants and sneakers are more important than ice cream. But CNN’s Carol Costello didn’t make that point.

In fact, Cohen said his company has produced another flavor, a Bernie Sanders ice cream called Bernie’s Yearning. He told Costello that the giant chip on the top represents all the wealth that’s gone to the top one percent of the population over the past 10 years. “And the way you eat it is that you whack it with your spoon, then you mix it around,” he said. “That’s the Bernie Yearning.”

We are all supposed to have a good laugh about all of this. Except that in socialist Venezuela, which Sanders once praised for shipping fuel to New England, there is a shortage of toilet paper.

That doesn’t bother the Hollywood super-rich. Blogger Steve Bartin notes that dozens of “artists and cultural leaders” have signed up as supporters of Sanders’ socialist program, including comedian Sarah Silverman, once quoted as saying unborn children are “just goo.” Bartin cites a piece by Professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds in The Wall Street Journal which says that Hollywood gets about $1.5 billion in tax credits and exemptions, grants, waived fees and other financial inducements. His source was a liberal group, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which noted that the funds could otherwise have been spent “on public services like education, health care, public safety, and infrastructure.”

In other words, services that could benefit what Sanders calls “ordinary Americans,” if only the Hollywood elite weren’t taking advantage of the taxpayers.

The Bernie Sanders campaign is proud of the Hollywood support. It says the number of “major artists from all genres of music, comedy, acting, writing, and producing” in support of Sanders has reached 125. They have their own special section on the “Sanders for president” website. Dr. Cornel West, honorary co-chair of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is listed under the category of “academic/philosopher.”

Sanders supporter and Hollywood director Adam McKay, who with Will Ferrell, co-wrote and directed the films “Anchorman” and “Step Brothers,” said, “As artists and citizens we believe it is time for government to once again represent the people and not just big money. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate speaking against the widespread legalized corruption that has handed our government to billionaires, large corporations and banks.”

Columnist Doug Powers commented, “I assume liberal celebs are pulling for Sanders’ style of socialism because he’s going to eliminate the tax credit programs for billion-dollar entertainment corporations? That story line would be too unbelievable even for Hollywood.”

Taking the personal hypocrisy one step further, leftist filmmaker Michael Moore has been quoted as saying that Sanders won the Democratic presidential debate because he questions “the core system” of wealth and power in the U.S. Moore’s net worth has been estimated at $50 million and he just went through a messy divorce, revealing that he had a 10,000 square foot lakeside home in northern Michigan once valued at $2 million.

Meanwhile, sniffing a story here, The New York Times has run a piece, “Bernie Sanders Has Fund-Raiser at Fancy Hollywood Home,” noting that the socialist finished up the debate and then raised money at the home of wealthy real estate operator Syd Leibovitch. The paper reported that tickets for the event sold for a minimum of $250. Those who spent the maximum, $2,700, or who raised $10,000, were invited to a special “pre-event reception,” the paper said.

It sounds like a special benefit for the rich and powerful.

The names on the host list included Marianne Williamson, the famous New Age spiritual teacher who has called for repealing Columbus Day. One of Williamson’s other political objectives being promoted by her Peace Alliance group is a federal Department of Peacebuilding.

Perhaps Sanders will promote that idea in the next presidential debate, after he bashes the rich and announces which brands of sneakers, deodorant and ice cream will go out of business under his administration.

When will the rest of the media follow the lead of The New York Times and expose this “man of the people” and his Hollywood backers as the phonies they truly are?

08/18/15

New Agers Back Socialist Sanders as Messiah

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The huge crowds greeting socialist Bernie Sanders in his run for the Democratic presidential nomination cannot just be attributed to large numbers of left-wingers. There is a hard-core left-wing element to the Sanders candidacy, of course. But Sanders has tapped into what used to be one of Hillary Clinton’s key constituencies, the New Age Movement. A top Sanders adviser is the influential “spiritual teacher” Marianne Williamson, whose self-help books have been heavily promoted by Oprah Winfrey and sold millions.

The New Age Movement is a growing group of people in America who have broken with the Judeo-Christian tradition to instead endorse the notion of God as a mystical force inhabiting humans, the earth, or spiritual “masters.” Oprah’s website describes it somewhat differently: “For 20 years, Marianne Williamson has been a pioneer on the front lines of a worldwide spiritual movement aimed at creating a global shift in collective consciousness.”

Taking this perspective into the political realm, Williamson has advocated a Department of Peacebuilding and has created a group called the Peace Alliance to bring this about.

Constance Cumbey has written two books on the New Age Movement and says its “toolbox is mysticism,” or “altered states of consciousness,” which are said to draw people into a relationship with spiritual forces in the world that are part of a “New World Order” and global religion to be headed by an anticipated “messianic figure” of some kind.

Whatever this mean for the world as a whole, it appears that Williamson sees Sanders as the savior of the American political system.

Williamson, who writes on the Sanders-for-president website about the need for “revolutionary power,” has used her vast influence to mobilize her followers on behalf of the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party. She says the Marxist presidency of Barack Obama hasn’t been radical enough. “Having invested so much hope in 2008 in a candidate who turned out in many ways to disappoint, it’s not easy to summon our internal forces for another big wave of revolutionary fervor,” she says. But Sanders, the “independent” socialist senator from Vermont, is a true revolutionary, she says. “If we all show up and exercise our power as citizens, Senator Sanders can win the presidency in 2016,” she adds.

Analyst Trevor Loudon has documented that Sanders, the only Senate member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is actually a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization that backed Obama’s political career and works with openly communist groups. “DSA works very closely with three of America’s leading communist groups—the Maoist leaning Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the ‘old guard’ Communist Party USA, and the CPUSA spin-off Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism,” notes Loudon. “The four groups have even seriously considered merging in recent years.”

We have noted Sanders’ history of involvement with Communist Party-controlled groups such as the U.S. Peace Council. In the 1980s, he was part of the Soviets’ “nuclear freeze” campaign to undercut President Ronald Reagan’s military build-up.

A former nightclub singer, Williamson herself ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2014 on a platform that included abortion rights, gay rights, socialized medicine, and the need to combat what she perceives as man-made global warming, nowadays called climate change. “While a lifelong Democrat herself, Marianne ran the congressional race as an Independent, making the statement that she was not beholden to either party,” noted writer Tabby Biddle.

“While America has some serious enemies—and it’s certainly our responsibility to protect our country and our children—I believe our country’s way of dealing with security issues is increasingly obsolete,” Williamson declared. “We cannot simply rely on brute force to rid ourselves of enemies. In so doing, we overburden our military by asking them to compensate for the work that we ourselves are not doing. The only way to make peace with your neighbors is to make peace with your neighbors.”

She added that, if she won, she would co-sponsor the bill to establish a U.S. Department of Peacebuilding that would examine “non-violent problem-solving options” to global conflict. The department was to be paid for out of the defense budget.

Labeled by The Hollywood Reporter as “Hollywood’s favorite New Age Guru” because of her influence with movie producers, directors, and actors, Williamson hosted Sanders at her own feminist-oriented “Sister Giant” conference earlier this year. Described personally as a “radical feminist mother,” Williamson has a daughter whose father is not known and whom she refuses to name.

While some of the New Age rhetoric and books can be dismissed as expensive but harmless fun, it’s when these “spiritual teachers” exert political influence and address global issues that we can see a tendency that seems even more radical than the usual Marxist drivel emanating from Democratic Party politicians such as Obama.

However, there is overlap. Williamson’s proposed Department of Peacebuilding, which was to be headed by a Secretary of Peacebuilding, was introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), one of Fidel Castro’s closest friends in the U.S. Congress.

Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who also works with Williamson, had introduced a similar bill. “The intention is to develop an organized approach, tapping the intellectual and spiritual power of America to develop programs that would include teaching children the principles of peace: teaching them peace giving, peace sharing, mutuality, seeing the other person as an aspect of oneself, of teaching the inner equality of all people,” Kucinich said in a post on Williamson’s Peace Alliance website.

Like Sanders, Williamson is considered by some to be pro-Israel. But in her book,The Healing of America, she discussed how Egypt’s highest Muslim cleric had once approached her “to make sure you understand that Islam is a religion of peace.” She didn’t say whether the Muslim leader condemned and rejected the passages in the Koran that call for killing the “Infidels” who resist Islam.

She also wrote, “The creative challenge of spiritual life is to know enough about God to be hopeful. From Jesus to Buddha to Moses to Mohammed, wayshowers have risen out of the timeline of history to draw maps and pave roads to a more perfect world.” The comparison of Jesus—who led a perfect life and preached love—to the Muslim Prophet Mohammad, is offensive on its face. Islam began in violence and Mohammad himself was a violent warrior.

The term “wayshowers” is common in New Age circles and refers to spiritual beings supposedly leading us into a new world of community and harmony.

When Keith Ellison became the first Congressman to take the oath of office with his hand on the Koran, Williamson commented, “Fantastic story.” Ellison, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, endorsed Williamson in her run for Congress.

For a time, Williamson and her associate Jean Houston of the Foundation for Mind Research were considered to be in Hillary Clinton’s political camp. Houston had tried to help Mrs. Clinton, when she was First Lady, “communicate” with Eleanor Roosevelt during a mystical “channeling” session.  Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote about these sessions in a book on the 1996 presidential election.

At some point, however, Cumbey says Houston and Williamson abandoned Hillary. Williamson said in 2008 that she was supporting Barack Obama and not Hillary because “I am not going to vote with my vagina.”

This was a dramatic turnaround, since Mrs. Clinton in her memoir Living Historyhad discussed hosting Williamson and Houston and other New Agers at Camp David. “You were wonderful to me back in 1994 when you invited me to the White House. It’s a memory I will treasure always, and you gave it to me,” Williamsonwrote back to Hillary in a Huffington Post article.

But the 2014 Williamson article, “An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton,” was actually prompted by Williamson’s revelation that the former First Lady was getting too close to powerful interests in society. Williamson pleaded with Clinton to, “Stop cozying up to the banks, to the chemical companies, to the military-industrial complex, to the party machine, and to all the various financiers who make up the plutocracy now ruining this country.”

The pleas apparently went unheeded, since Williamson eventually broke completely with Hillary and now promotes Sanders for president and writes for his website. Through Sanders and other such candidates, she insists, America can experience a revolution “of light, of consciousness, and love” and “break out of this ridiculous corporate straightjacket that imperils us the way it does now.”

Whatever this means, it has occurred to some on the far-left that while Sanders is taking on “corporate power and oligarchy” and calling for vast federal spending increases for social welfare programs, the “issues” section of his presidential website says absolutely nothing about foreign policy. The group called RootsAction complains that his stump speech hardly mentions the “huge military budget” and says he must challenge “militarism and ongoing war.”

Perhaps Williamson’s proposed Department of Peacebuilding will be the focus of one of Sanders’ next speeches, a development that will make the socialist senator not only look like a pawn of Williamson and the New Age Movement, but the true leader of the Loony Left.

07/17/15

How the Republicans Plan to Lose to Hillary

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

A new survey from Univision, the pro-Mexico television network, demonstrates the utter folly of Republicans appealing to Hispanic voters. It finds that 68 percent have a favorable view of Hillary Clinton despite the scandals swirling around her. By contrast, only 36 percent have a favorable view of former Republican Governor Jeb Bush, who is married to a Mexican and speaks Spanish.

Bush “was the highest-rated of all the Republican candidates,” Univision reports, with Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), a one-time proponent of amnesty for illegals, coming in second with only a 35 percent approval rate.

What the poll demonstrates is that Hispanics are basically owned by the Democratic Party. The Democrats’ power grab for the Latino vote has been successful. However, ultimately the Democratic Party’s success in the presidential election depends on convincing Republicans to fruitlessly continue to appeal to Hispanics, while abandoning the GOP voter base of whites, conservatives and Christians.

Overall, in terms of political party affiliation, 57 percent of Hispanics identified themselves as Democrats and only 18 percent said they are Republicans. A total of 25 percent called themselves independent.

In another finding, 59 percent of Hispanic voters said they were satisfied with Barack Obama’s presidency after his six years in office. Clearly, most Hispanics have drunk the Kool-Aid. For them, it appears that federal benefits and legalization of border crossers are what matters. Most of them don’t bat an eye in regard to Obama’s lawless and traitorous conduct of domestic and foreign policy.

What the Republicans have left is to try to appeal to white, conservative and Christian voters. But that strategy, of course, runs the obvious risk of being depicted by the liberal media as racist. After all, whites are not supposed to have a “white identity,” as Jared Taylor’s book by that name describes.

Whites cannot have a racial identity, but Hispanics and blacks can. This is one aspect of political correctness. As communists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who are themselves white, put it in their book, it is a “race course against white supremacy.”

If Republicans pander to Hispanics, they will alienate their voter base, which has shown in their reaction to the Donald Trump candidacy that they want more—not less—action taken to control the border with Mexico. Republican Senator John McCain (AZ) calls the Trump supporters “crazies,” an indication that the GOP establishment would rather jettison these people than bring them into the Republican camp. Like McCain, former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has also attacked Trump, saying his remarks about criminal aliens are hurting the GOP. It’s amazing how a loser like Romney, who also threw in the towel on gay marriage when he was governor of Massachusetts, continues to generate press. What he is saying is what the liberal media want to hear.

Of course, the political correctness which dominates the national dialogue and debate also means that Republicans like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio are likely to continue to demonize Trump, thereby alienating many whites. As a result, the Republicans will get less of the conservative and Christian vote, further diminishing their chances of winning the White House. It will be a replay of the losing campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney. Republicans have already alienated many Christian voters by giving up the fight for traditional marriage. They had planned to abandon border control as an issue until Trump and “El Chapo” got in the way.

Meanwhile, in another amazing turnaround, Republicans on Capitol Hill are backing Obama’s call for “sentencing reform,” a strategy that will empty the prisons and increase the crime rate, thereby alienating GOP voters in favor of law and order.

As this scenario plays out, Mrs. Clinton is coming across on the Democratic side looking like a moderate, by virtue of the fact that an open socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), is running “to her left” for the Democratic nomination.

The Clinton-Sanders show has all the earmarks of a carefully staged demonstration of the Marxist dialectic, an exercise designed to create the appearance of conflict in order to force even more radical change on the American people through Democratic Party rule.

Anybody who knows anything about Hillary, a student of Saul Alinsky, understands that her “moderation” is only a façade. Her thesis on Alinsky for Wellesley College was titled “There Is Only the Fight…” That is the Marxist strategy. It is the Alinsky version of the Marxist dialectic. It was also adopted by Obama, who was trained by Alinsky disciples working with the Catholic Church in Chicago.

In my column, “Study Marxism to Understand Hillary,” I noted that Barbara Olson had come to the conclusion while researching her book on Hillary that “she has a political ideology that has its roots in Marxism.” Olson noted, “In her formative years, Marxism was a very important part of her ideology…”

This means that Mrs. Clinton understands that the Sanders candidacy actually supports and does not undermine her own candidacy. It makes Hillary look like a moderate while she moves further to the left, a place she wants to be, in response to the left-wing Democratic base. Only the Marxist insiders seem to understand what is happening.

Some uninformed commentators refer to something called “Clintonism,” a supposed moderate brand of Democratic Party politics. If that ever existed, it applied to Bill Clinton and not Hillary.

The fact is that Sanders and Mrs. Clinton have associated with the same gang of communists and fellow travelers for many years. Sanders was an active collaborator with the Communist Party-sponsored U.S. Peace Council.

As for Hillary, Barbara Olson reported in her book Hell to Pay that Robert Borosage, who served as director of the Marxist Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), was “a colleague and close acquaintance” of Clinton. Olson wrote that Mrs. Clinton operated in the “reaches of the left including Robert Treuhaft and Jessica Mitford,” who had been “committed Communists” and “Stalinists.” Olson said that Hillary worked for Treuhaft and paved the way for Mitford to lobby then-Governor Bill Clinton on the death penalty issue.

Olson described Hillary as a “budding Leninist” who understood the Leninist concept of acquiring, accumulating and maintaining political power at any cost. She wrote that “Hillary has never repudiated her connection with the Communist movement in America or explained her relationship with two of its leading adherents. Of course, no one has pursued these questions with Hillary. She has shown that she will not answer hard questions about her past, and she has learned that she does not need to—remarkable in an age when political figures are allowed such little privacy.”

Researcher Carl Teichrib has provided me with a photo of a Hillary meeting with Cora Weiss from the May 2000 edition of “Peace Matters,” the newsletter of the Hague Appeal for Peace. Weiss, a major figure in the Institute for Policy Studies, gained notoriety for organizing anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and traveling to Hanoi to meet with communist leaders. In the photo, Hillary is shown fawning over a Hague Appeal for Peace gold logo pin that Weiss is wearing.

Teichrib, editor of Forcing Change, recalls being an observer at the 1999 World Federalist Association (WFA) conference, held in association with the Hague Appeal for Peace, during which everyone in attendance was given an honorary membership into the WFA. In addition to collaborating with the pro-Hanoi Hague Appeal for Peace, the WFA staged a “Mission to Moscow” and held several meetings with the Soviet Peace Committee for the purpose of “discussing the goal of general and complete disarmament” and “the strengthening of the United Nations.” Mrs. Clinton spoke to a WFA conference in a tribute to veteran newsman Walter Cronkite, a supporter of world government

In the WFA booklet, “The Genius of Federation: Why World Federation is the Answer to Global Problems,” the group described how a “world federation,” a euphemism for world government, could be achieved by advancing “step by step toward global governance,” mostly by enhancing the power and authority of U.N. agencies.

Obama’s Iran deal continues this strategy by placing enormous power in the hands of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

At this stage in the campaign, even before the first Republican presidential debate, we can already see how the race is playing out. Hillary is counting on the Republicans nominating another loser with a losing strategy while she moves to the left and looks like a moderate.

Alinsky would be proud.

05/3/15

Marxist Democrats and the Return of the Hanoi Lobby

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The main failure by top Republicans—and even many conservatives—is that they do not challenge President Obama as the Marxist he is, and they have no coherent alternative to his strategic plan of supporting America’s enemies.

Reflecting the current mindset—that Obama is just a misguided liberal—Republican strategist Karl Rove failed to anticipate or understand the nature of the growing anti-Obama movement, and the potential it holds. He had predicted the GOP would pick up only six seats in the House, when the Republicans picked up 14 seats. He had predicted that Republican would win the Senate with 51 seats, when the actual figure turned out to be 54.

Republicans like Rove do not understand the nature of the Democratic Party and how it has been taken over by Marxist forces. He had advised Republicans in 2008 and 2012 not to refer to Obama as a socialist. However, grassroots conservatives increasingly understand the dangers we are facing.

The 40th anniversary of the end of United States military involvement in Vietnam—and the 50th anniversary of the start of that U.S. military involvement—provide an opportunity to understand how the Democratic Party has changed. During that 10-year period, 1965-1975, more than 58,000 Americans sacrificed and died to save that country from communism.

Today, with the help of the Republican leadership, President Obama is trying to wrap up a Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal that includes communist Vietnam, a dictatorship with the blood of those Americans on its hands, which has no respect for the human rights of its own people. Interestingly, Obama is trying to sell the agreement as a counter to China’s influence throughout the world. He wants us to believe that China and Vietnam somehow differ on their common objective of achieving world communism at the expense of America’s standing as the leader of what used to be the Free World.

Both countries would gladly welcome the U.S. to help pay to accelerate the growth of their socialist economies and expand their markets.

Vietnam would be free today except for a Democratic-controlled Congress that decided otherwise. Lewis Fanning’s excellent book, Betrayal in Vietnam, notes that “…it was not the Hanoi communists who won the war, but rather the American Congress that lost it.” Fanning writes, “It was not until after the United States elections in the fall of 1974 that North Vietnamese field commanders received the go-ahead in their plans to conquer South Vietnam. As a result of the Watergate scandals, the Democrats had gained forty-three seats in the House. This liberal victory meant that in the 94th Congress there would be 291 Democrats and only 144 Republicans. In the Senate, the Democrats had gained three seats and the lineup was now 61 Democrats to 39 Republicans. This leftward shift of both congressional chambers played a significant role in the North Vietnamese decision to unleash its army.”

Going through the provisions of various bills offered by Democrats in Congress, he presents the case that “A Democratic caucus of the Congress of the United States, aided and abetted by a few liberal Republicans, cast the South Vietnamese people into Communist slavery.”

That left-wing caucus, Members of Congress for Peace through Law, decided that American military involvement would end, and dramatically reduced aid to the government of South Vietnam. Republican President Gerald Ford, who took power after Richard Nixon’s resignation, understood that Congress would not provide enough assistance to keep the country free of communism. Hundreds of thousands of “boat people” tried to escape the Hanoi communists who took power in Saigon while the communist Khmer Rouge took power in neighboring Cambodia, eliminating almost two million people.

The Members of Congress for Peace through Law eventually grew to became the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the largest group of congressional members within the Democratic Party. This faction is the subject of Trevor Loudon’s book, The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the US Congress, which is now being made into a major film.

The only Senate member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is Vermont’s “independent” Senator Bernie Sanders, who has just announced he is running for president. It is telling that Sanders, an open socialist who collaborated with the communists through the Soviet-run U.S. Peace Council, thinks he has sufficient stature and credibility within the party to rally the “progressives.”

Sanders worked closely with the communist fronts which were busy in the 1980s trying to undermine President Ronald Reagan’s peace-through-strength policies toward the Soviet Union.

As we have noted, the name of Bernie Sanders, then identified as former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, even showed up on a list of speakers at a 1989 U.S. Peace Council event to “end the Cold War” and “fund human needs.” Other speakers at the U.S. Peace Council event included Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan; Gunther Dreifahl of the East German “Peace Council;” Jesse Jackson aide Jack O’Dell; and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official Zehdi Terzi.

In 1981, the Soviet-front U.S. Peace Council held its second national conference. Endorsers included Democratic Rep. Danny K. Davis, one of Obama’s associates in Chicago, and David Cortright of a group known as SANE, for the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy.

Rep. Davis got an award from the Communist Party in 2012 and the major media ignored it. Jeremy Segal recorded video of the Democratic Representative getting the communist award—and still the media ignored it

Today Cortright is the Associate Director of Programs and Policy Studies of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, which offers a Ph.D in “Peace Studies.” He is in charge of a conference this week in Washington, D.C. titled, “The Vietnam War Then and Now: Assessing the Critical Lessons.”

The Kroc Institute is named after Joan Kroc, the widow of McDonald’s Corp. founder Ray Kroc. She contributed $69.1 million to establish and support the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

The final conference panel, “The Anti-War Movement: What were the impacts of the anti-war movement?,” includes Cora Weiss and Tom Hayden, supporters of the communist enemy, and Cortright himself, an agent of influence or dupe.

Hayden is probably the best known of the “anti-war” activists, having become “Mr. Jane Fonda” when he married the actress after she posed with a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun used to shoot down and kill American pilots over Vietnam. Hayden had personally written a June 4, 1968, “Dear Col. Lao” letter to a North Vietnamese official that ended, “Good fortune! Victory!”

Not surprisingly, Hayden, a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during the 1960s, would later join “Progressives for Obama.”

The Democrats in Congress at that time were working with what became known as the “Hanoi Lobby,” a collection of communist and socialist groups that played a key role in America’s defeat. The remnants of the Hanoi Lobby are active today in such areas as backing Obama’s normalization of relations with and recognition of communist Cuba.

Then, like now, their plan is to work on behalf of enemies of the United States. Although they usually call themselves “anti-war” peace activists, they don’t seem to be concerned about wars started by anti-American regimes and movements which undermine U.S. interests. The Sanders candidacy will help smoke them out.

Ironically, Sanders is opposing Obama’s Asia trade agreement, largely because Big Labor is against it, while top Republicans in the House and Senate are trying to round up enough votes to approve fast track trade promotion authority for Obama and then pass the agreement itself. These are the same Republicans who have been complaining that Obama has assumed too much executive authority.

It seems as if the Republicans never learn. Or else they don’t want to.

04/24/15

The DNA Deniers in the Media

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The media have launched a major campaign on behalf of the “transgendered.” The Bruce Jenner ABC News interview is the most visible manifestation of this campaign. However, the NBC Nightly News on Wednesday ran a story by Kate Snow about the “transgender grandchild” of Democratic Rep. Mike Honda of Hawaii. Lacking in the coverage is any concrete definition of the term “transgendered” or any discussion of how children are now being used to promote an increasingly bizarre sexual agenda that requires physically mutilating or chemically treating very confused young people.

The Human Rights Campaign, a group co-founded by accused sex offender Terry Bean, a major Democratic Party fundraiser, quickly highlighted this latest NBC News report in a continuing series on “transgender youth.”

However, just like the terms lesbian, gay, and bisexual, the word “transgendered” applies to certain behaviors or appearances and does not signify anything scientific or biological about a person.

Regardless of what you may see or read in the media, nature has given humanity two sexes, male and female, which are defined by DNA. People can call themselves anything they want, but the biological facts of life cannot be denied.

This is why, when The Washington Post ran a recent story about a “transgendered” soldier who claims to be a man, the paper noted that the military regards “him” as a “her,” because biologically that is what he really is. You cannot change your DNA.

The point is that those claiming to be one of any number of categories of alleged sexual minorities can accurately be labeled DNA deniers if they deny their fundamental biological identity.

The liberals and their media allies always claim they are in favor of science on matters such as global warming or climate change. But strangely, on the matter of human sexuality, science is denied and people are allowed to make up “facts” about themselves, describing their sexuality in terms that happen to be pleasing to them for any reason at all. A new category is “questioning,” meaning that a person can decide, apparently from day to day, what sexual minority they belong to.

If someone feels he or she is a member of the opposite sex, then that is perfectly acceptable, according to the LGBT community and its supporters.

But facts are facts, and science is science. Even liberal publications have to admit this. “The simplest thing DNA can tell you is whether someone is male or female,” notes the Guardian.

But consider the NBC story. Snow referred to Rep. Honda as having “tweeted a photo of himself on Twitter back in February, grinning next to his beautiful 8-year-old granddaughter Malisa…” But Malisa is not a girl. Malisa is biologically a boy. He was born with the name Brody.

Snow reported that the parents “thought their second child would be a boy. But by the time their child was three, she had chosen a new name for herself—Malisa.” A child at the age of three decided to become a girl? Could it be that the child was going through a phase and living in a fantasy? It seems apparent that the child was born a boy and was going through some confusion about his sexual identity. The parents decided to encourage this confusion by allowing the child to now identify as a girl.

Rather than celebrate this bizarre development, the parents should be questioned about their child-rearing skills. What the child (and the parents) may need is serious psychological counseling.

Of course, the homosexuals and their supporters, most notably President Barack Obama, adamantly oppose any kind of change therapy to return troubled young people to their biologically-based sexual orientation.

Snow reported, “Although there are no exact numbers, Malisa joined what experts say is a growing number of children transitioning at a young age.” No exact numbers? Experts? Who are they? This is propaganda masquerading as journalism. It is designed to feed the notion that nature’s determination that humans are born male and female is a gross miscalculation, and that humans can decide whether they are male or female, or whatever.

What Snow is describing is sexual confusion brought on by a culture (and possibly parents) which has obscured the sexual differences between men and women. This is where the homosexual movement has brought our nation.

Snow reports, “The family knows they are just at the beginning of this journey with Malisa, and work closely with a team of doctors. As she approaches puberty, they’ll have to consider whether to use so called puberty blockers and hormone therapy.”

The “puberty blockers” will be designed to stop “Malisa” from being the boy “she” is. They will stop the growth of facial hair and an Adam’s apple. He may also have to undergo some form of sex change surgery or other medical treatment.

Rather than challenge this insidious campaign of making children into pawns of the sexual “liberation” movement, some conservative and Republican politicians on Capitol Hill are voting for measures to in some way “protect” or outlaw alleged “discrimination” against sexual minorities.

For example, ten Republican senators voted for a measure introduced by far left-wing Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy (VT) to protect alleged “LGBT homeless youth.” They were Senators Kelly Ayotte (NH), Shelley Moore Capito (WV), Susan Collins (ME), Dean Heller (NV), Mark Kirk (IL), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Rand Paul (KY), Rob Portman (OH), Dan Sullivan (AK) and Pat Toomey (PA).

The term “LGBT homeless youth” is designed to expand the reach of the federal government into yet another area of human activity, based on questionable surveys and experts.

The power of the propaganda emanating from the media has created the perception, even among these Republicans, that this is a major problem that the federal government must address.

Not surprisingly, the homosexual movement was ecstatic. Thanks to those 10 Republicans, the headline over the AP article was, “A Majority Of The Senate Is Voting For LGBT Rights.”

The DNA deniers are on the march, making serious inroads into the national Republican Party.

01/12/15

Weekly Featured Profile – KeyWiki – Karen Kubby

KeyWiki

Karen Kubby

Karen Kubby has been a prominent Iowa City, Iowa activist since the 1970s. She has been a three term Iowa City Councillor and Executive Director of the Emma Goldman Clinic for Women, an abortion clinic named after famous anarchist Emma Goldman.

Kubby has been heavily involved in activism including standing on “picket lines with local labor unions and advocating for environmental protection, affordable housing, supporting the public library and a variety of other human rights issues.”

Kubby has served on the Socialist Party USA National Committee since 1980. In 2001, David McReynolds‘ 2000 campaign team organized a “Draft Kubby” effort for the 2004 campaign for presidency of the Socialist Party USA. However, Kubby declined to run for the presidency of the Party, stating that she did not want to do anything that would interfere with the plans of her then husband, prominent Iowa State Senator Joe Bolkcom ‘s plans to eventually run for Congress on the Democrat ticket.

Kubby is also very close to America’s largest Marxist group, Democratic Socialists of America. Iowa City Democratic Socialists of America leader, Jeff Cox, was Treasurer for Kubby for Council in 1988. She has also contributed to the group’s magazine, The Prairie Progressive.

Democratic Socialists of America is also supporting their member, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, in a bid for the U.S. Presidency in 2016.

During the summer and fall of 2006, Democratic Socialists of America Political Action Committee helped DSA activists around the country, “from San Diego up to Maine” to host house parties to raise funds that helped Bernie Sanders become the sole open socialist in the U.S. Senate.

On October 8, Jeff Cox of DSA and Karen Kubby of the Socialist Party USA teamed up to hold a house party in Iowa City for Sanders’ campaign.

In 2016, an Iowa group says it wants Senator Sanders to run for President as a Democrat in the 2016 Iowa caucuses.

The steering committee members include Karen Kubby and DSAer Jeff Cox.

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