One of the most disturbing things about Barack Obama is not Obama himself, but rather some of the people around him, including several people he has put into positions of authority. I've already detailed the radical nature of a couple Obama administration personnel, Science Czar John Holdren and FCC Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd. Holdren has a number of crazy beliefs, among them being the idea that the U.S. Constitution doesn't entitle people to have children. Holdren declared “neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mentions a right to reproduce" in his 1977 book, Ecoscience. Evidently, Holdren missed the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence – "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." In Holdren's defense, he only attended MIT and Stanford. Maybe they don't teach the basics at those elite schools. I don't know. I could only afford to go to Podunk University in Backwater, USA (so I am oppressed and demand reparations ! Just kidding. My inner whiny liberal took over for a second there). Yet, somehow I know the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution better than Holdren does. I must have read about it on a bathroom wall somewhere, or maybe at a gun show.
Mark Lloyd is another elite. He was a professor at Georgetown and a visiting lecturer at MIT prior to becoming a Hugo Chavez-loving Nazi hell-bent on destroying free speech on America's airwaves. Here's a quote from the well-educated Professor Lloyd:
“It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. . . . This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. . . . At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.”
Yes, Mr. Lloyd, it certainly IS clear that your focus is not free speech. That's why you should take the Che poster down from the wall of your office, clean out your desk, and go peddle your commie crap someplace like Cuba or Venezuela, but not here. Not in this country. We still call this the land of the free, not the land of government diktat.
Another Communist in the Obama administration is the eminent Van Jones, the Green Jobs Czar. Mr. Jones went to Yale, so he's a real smart fellow, just like the other radical nutjobs I've mentioned. Jones claims to have been radicalized by the Rodney King verdict. By his own words, that drove him to embrace Marxism. I can't say I follow Mr. Jones' logic there, but like I said, I'm not one of the elite. To me, embracing communism because of a perceived American civil rights injustice is like jumping out of an airplane in flight because you don't like your seat. It's a hysterical and moronic overreaction. Maybe Jones doesn't realize that, under Communism, YOU DON'T HAVE ANY CIVIL RIGHTS to begin with. What a boob, er, I mean, deep thinker. Liberal groups have been claiming that Jones radical Communist days are behind him, but here's Van Jones in April, 2009:
"This [green] movement is deeper than a solar panel! Deeper than a solar panel! Don't stop there! Don't stop there! We're gonna change the whole system! We're gonna change the whole thing. We're not gonna put a new battery in a broken system. We want a new system. We want a new system!…And our Native American sisters and brothers who were pushed and bullied and mistreated and shoved into all the land we didn't want, where it was all hot and windy. Well, guess what? Renewable energy? Guess what, solar industry? Guess what wind industry? They now own and control 80 percent of the renewable energy resources. No more broken treaties. No more broken treaties. Give them the wealth! Give them the wealth! Give them the dignity. Give them the respect that they deserve. No justice on stolen land. We owe them a debt…What about our immigrant sisters and brothers? What about our immigrant sisters and brothers? What about people who come here from all around the world who we're willing to have out in the field, with poison being sprayed on them, poison being sprayed on them because we have the wrong agricultural system. And we're willing to poison them and poison the earth to put food on our table, but we don't want to give them rights and we don't want to give them dignity and we don't want to give them respect?…We're really entering a third wave of environmentalism in the United States. The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color communities."
Sounds to me like Jones is still a radical, and a race-baiter to boot. Whitey is poisoning people of color ????? We need to change the whole system ? Into what, Mr. Marxist ? Glenn Beck has been on a tirade against Van Jones for awhile now, and a group Van Jones founded, Color Of Change, has been trying to get Beck kicked off the air (which kinda proves Jones is a Communist. That's what Communists do, silence the opposition. They aren't about the free and open exchange of ideas, in case anyone hasn't figured that out yet).
The next commie-loving race-baiter on the radical hit parade isn't a member of Obama's administration, but her stupidity merits recognition. Her name is Diane Watson, Democratic Congresswoman from California. This woman LOVES her some Fidel Castro, and is so lost in identity politics that she can't even think straight. Dig it:
"You might have heard their philosophical leader. I think his name is Rush Limbaugh. And he said early on, “I hope that he fails.”…And remember: They are spreading fear and they are trying to see that the first president that looks likes me fails [Watson is black]…. just want you to know: People look at the United States as a country that has changed its way and has elected someone from Kenya and Kansas, I’ll put it like that. And they’re saying, “We thought you would never do that.” So we don’t want to have this young man, and he just turned 48 — we want him to succeed, because when he succeeds, we regain our status. We regain our status….
It was just mentioned to me by our esteemed speaker, “Did anyone say anything about the Cuban health system?”
And lemme tell ya, before you say “Oh, it’s a commu–”, you need to go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place. And I want you to know, now, you can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met. [APPLAUSE]
And you know, the Cuban revolution that kicked out the wealthy, Che Guevara did that, and then, after they took over, they went out among the population to find someone who could lead this new nation, and they found…well, just leave it there (laughs), an attorney by the name of Fidel Castro…"
First of all, Ms. Watson, we are allowed to oppose Obama's policies, even though he looks like you. His skin color is completely irrelevant, except to those like yourself who are too blind to see anything else. These race-based comments are really just attempts at thought suppression. There's no other way to view them.
About Cuba, yes, please, let's "go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place." I believe the generally accepted term for it is OPPRESSION, along with a health dose of POVERTY, as happens with all Communist states. Cuba is a police state. Fortunately, the Democratic primary challenger for Watson's congressional seat doesn't share Watson's myopic view of Cuban health care. Let's vote him into office.
The final person on today's list is Cass Sunstein, Obama's Regulatory Czar. This guy is an intellectual heavyweight. He's a former Harvard Law Professor, and an expert in constitutional law, environmental law, and behavioral economics. I'm not certain how radical he is, because he's a complex man, but he has at least some very confused ideas. Here are a few of his elite ramblings:
“Much of the time, the United States seems to have embraced a confused and pernicious form of individualism. This approach endorses rights of private property and freedom of contract, and respects political liberty, but claims to distrust ‘government intervention’ and insists that people must fend for themselves. This form of so-called individualism is incoherent, a tangle of confusions"
This is quite the straw man argument. I don't know of a single person who doesn't think the government has a legitimate role to play. Government is uniquely qualified for certain roles, and those were laid out in the very beginning by the Constitution. What I distrust is GOVERNMENT INTRUDING INTO EVERY ASPECT OF SOCIETY, as it has been doing by gradual degree for my entire lifetime. And Mr. Sunstein, individualism is not "pernicious." Railing against it is.
"A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government"
This is Sunstein endorsing the Fairness Doctrine in order to control political speech. Looks like we have another nut who doesn't believe in free speech.
I just LOVE this next Sunstein quote. Love it.
“In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live?… Without taxes there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public fisc. … There is no liberty without dependency. That is why we should celebrate tax day …”
Did we earn our own money ? Um, YES.
Did we earn it by our own efforts ? YES.
Could we have inherited it without probate courts ? YES.
Could we save it without bank regulators ? YES. (We could even save it without banks).
Could we spend it without public officials ? YES.
Sunstein sounds like the typical government drone, who thinks absolutely everything is derived from government. Wrong.
"Without taxes there would be no liberty," says Sunstein. To an extent, this is true, because taxation supports the government, which exists to secure our liberties. As George Washington said, "Freedom is not free." I think everyone agrees with that much. But should we "celebrate tax day" when our resources are stripped from us to pay for everything under the sun that the government can dream up, waaay beyond securing our liberty ? I think not. Should we celebrate pork barrel spending, special interest handouts, bailouts of the big corporations, the ripoff of our own Social Security system, private jets for congresspersons, trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities ? That would be NO. "Celebrate tax day," indeed. I'd almost as soon celebrate the day burglars broke into my home and stole my television, stereo, and my wife's jewelry. I never once thanked those burglars for helping to redistribute my wealth, nor will I thank the government for stealing my paycheck for unconstitutional purposes. Government exists to secure our liberties, not to rip them away.
