Open Thread

The Cycle of Freedom

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."-Alexander Fraser Tytler, 1747-1813

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations was 200 years.

Each of these once-great nations went through the following cycle:

From bondage to spiritual faith
From spiritual faith to great courage
From great courage to liberty
From liberty to abundance
From abundance to selfishness
From selfishness to complacency
From complacency to apathy
From apathy to dependency
From dependency back to bondage

The United States of America is now in its 232nd year of existence and Barack Hussein Obama will be our next President. Obama could very well succeed in permanently remaking America into his Marxist "utopia" where the majority of our citizens are dependent upon the government. As bad as is the current recession, these are the good old days.

Tytler notes that the final stage in the demise of a democracy is a return to bondage. Obama will appoint activist judges to infringe our first and second amendment rights.

The Democrats will enact legislation to muzzle radio, television and the internet. Look for a return to the "Fairness Doctrine" and imposition of high fees on the airwaves. Look for a push for national firearms registration as a prelude to confiscation of all privately owned guns. Look for stronger "environmental" and eminent domain laws designed to usurp the right to privately owned real estate. Look for nationalization of the financial, health care, pharmaceutical, insurance and energy industries. Look for a huge stealth tax on carbon to address the bogus global warming problem. Look for quick passage of Obama's H.R. 800 which will force all working folks to pay union dues to corrupt union bosses by using the power of open ballot intimidation.

Also look for at least one noisy flag-waving American to be fighting Obama's decadent "Change" every step of the way.

SNL BAILOUT SKIT

This is the original version before it was pulled and re-edited by NBC... Enjoy!

The Obama Tax "Cut"

I have studied the Obama tax plan and something interesting appears to emerge:

Single folks with taxable income over $116,000 will probably see their taxes go up by 3% on their income over this amount!

The following is how I arrived at this. According to the Obama tax plan:

1) The top two brackets will rise from 33 to 36% and from 35 to 39.5% whereas the other brackets will remain the same.

2) Taxes for families (ie. Married Joint filers) will not increase if they earn less than $250,000. This promise will be difficult to jettison like Bill Clinton did with his "middle class tax cut", because Obama has published it on his web site and it appears in his campaign ads.

But to arrive at the corresponding taxable income bracket for those who don't itemize, take 250,000 and reduce it for the 2008 standard deduction of 10,900 and less two personal exemptions at 3,500 and you get taxable income of 232,100. Since taxable income for single filers is about half that of married filing joint, then 232,100 / 2 = 116,050. I believe this change will be made retroactive to the beginning of 2009.

3) Taxes on lower brackets have been promised a variety of tax credits, although probably less generous than Obama has promoted, at least in the first 2-3 years of his presidency. This is because he will want the economy to suffer from tax increases early in his presidency so he can blame the previous president, then allow time for the economy to recover in time for the election. Later in his presidency he will also grant his tax credit give aways for the lower brackets so he can get credit for doing that right before the next election. Expansion of the earned income credit means that po' folks who pay no taxes, will get a handsome bonus check from those who do.

The good news is that I believe that the stock market has already fallen to reflect this tax on productivity as well as the coming increase in capital gains taxes.

So I believe the stock market will now rise somewhat from its over-correction, but not rise and remain at the earlier levels for 2 to 4 years, depending upon the political situation.

Since Obama may have a "mandate" and will probably control both houses of Congress, I feel certain he will attempt to damage the economy in the interests of fairness, raise the minimum wage, nationalize health care, eliminate the right of workers to silent votes on union ballots, etc.

Also look for massive stealth taxes on energy like Bill Clinton attempted, but this time in order to fight the "global warming" boogeyman. Everyone will pay these taxes indirectly, as part of the price built into everything we buy, and much of the new revenue will end up in the general fund to buy votes.

However this Marxist over-reach, in combination with outrageous Supreme Court appointments, will incur the ire of the voters, and result in a Republican backlash in the Congressional elections of 2010. If the Republicans can take back Congress, then the market and the economy may really take off, in a scenario like we had in 1994.

But we undoubtedly will have extraordinary inflationary pressures once the economy recovers, and the full effect of out-of-control federal spending and borrowing becomes understood. This will lead to an increase in value of real estate, gold, and some common stock. Anyone holding a low rate fixed income mortgage will benefit, since he will be able to repay his mortgage with inflated dollars. But anyone on a pension or holding fixed rate, long term obligations will suffer.

Personally, I can manage my income by reducing my workload and opt for more leisure time, and arrange my finances to avoid the tax and inflation traps, so I am feeling optimistic again!

But certainly, other folks will be glad to pay more taxes because, according to Joe Biden, it is the patriotic thing to do.

An American Carol

A Review By Freedom Fan

An American Carol opened Friday, October 3 and I decided it was my duty as an American Conservative to go see it. I wasn't expecting much, but when I thought of the bravery it must have taken for all the big Hollywood names to come out of the closet as Conservatives, I felt it was the least I could do. I was delightfully surprised. I got there on time, so took one of the last available seats in the crowded theater, populated mainly by middle aged folks like me.

An American Carol is a parody on Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol in which an America-hating Michael Moore Scrooge character, "Michael Malone" is visited by great Americans throughout history and 'gently urged' to repent his sins. Malone is campaigning to end the celebration of the Fourth of July because America's past and present are too offensive to celebrate.

The movie is narrated by Leslie Nielson and stars Jon Voight as George Washington, Kelsey Grammar as Patton, country singer Trace Adkins as the Angel of Death, Bill O'Reilly as himself, Robert Davi as the terrorist leader, with celebrity cameos by Dennis Hopper, James Woods, Gary Coleman, and Paris Hilton.

I remember David Zucker's movie Airplane! which at first I thought was one of the most irreverently funny movies I had seen, until the predictable slapstick got kinda boring, and needed much better editing toward the end. But Zucker did not make the same mistake in An American Carol, which was poignantly funny all the way through. Zucker's other movies include The Naked Gun, Scary Movie, Police Squad, Top Secret, and many sequels.

True, the Michael Moore character, "Michael Malone", was slapped or met with random violence about 1,033 times, but curiously, I never seemed to tire of this device. Kevin Farley, brother of the late Chris Farley, played the character brilliantly.

It probably doesn't bother Michael Moore to be thought by millions to be a goofball 'America-hater', but undoubtedly he will be disturbed at the way the movie relentlessly dismisses him as merely a maker of 'documentaries' rather than real feature movies.

Here are some of my favorite parts:

* A parody on Rosie O'Donnell who is such an extreme leftist whacko that she even embarrasses leftist whacko Michael Moore. Then a skit ridicules her familiar leftist mantra that Christians are even more dangerous than Islamic fundamentalists.

* A musical number performed by the faculty of Columbia U. (they actually use that name) tells students that they automatcially get extra credit if they're "poor, black or gay."

* A skit ripping the leftist "War Is Never The Answer" mantra, in which Malone visits slaves on his own modern day cotton plantation, after Lincoln negotiated with the South rather than fighting the Civil War.

* When a Hollywood actor accepts an award and congratulates Hollywood for being 'brave' by ripping nazis and other assorted erstwhile boogeymen while totally ignoring Islamist terrorists who might actually threaten any Hollywood type who accurately represented them. (Hopefully actors in this film will not themselves be in danger from Islamists.)

* A patriotic country song by Trace Adkins during which the audience is panned to reveal singing ghosts of American soldiers from present day back through each of the wars back to the birth of the U.S.

In the theater, the movie received a spontaneous burst of loud applause at the end, which I thought was very cool.

If you are a leftist professor, Hollywood actor, mainstream media type, or other assorted leftist moonbat, get your chuckles off at some Oliver Stone or Bill Maher or one of thousands of similar Liberal flicks instead. I have more important things to do ... like pick up pet poop.

However, if you are a Conservative, run immediately ... do not pass 'go' ... see the movie today!

Sarah Palin Visits Southern California!

by Freedom Fan, Citizen Journalist, Dateline: Carson California, October 4, 2008

Sarah Palin spoke to an overflow crowd of about 30,000 Southern Californian supporters (per the Fire Marshall). Unfortunately, the smaller of the two venues only held 15,000.

Classy actor, Jon Voight, was there to support Palin. But somewhat surprisingly, Palin was introduced by Shelly Mandell, National Organization for Women chairperson, (N.O.W., Southern California chapter), a Democrat who declared Palin to be a feminist.




Palin supporters braved the drizzle and the assaults by air and bullhorn from lunatic Liberals.





When I heard the event was at the Home Depot Center, I expected to see some of the guys who helped me build my garage. However the event was held at a large sports arena sponsored by Home Depot.



In the previous post by Volt we learn that leftist radicals Cloward and Piven designed the role of Community Organizer to organize the dregs of humanity in order to maximize their government handouts, identify new beneficiaries and create new benefits, and ultimately force the overly stressed "social safety net" to collapse, leading to a socialist totalitarian state. So would Jesus really be cool with that, lady?


This reminded me of the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz ... "Go Home Dorothy!". Actually this was some rich, dishonest Liberal attempting to use the name "Sarah Palin" to somehow discredit California Prop 4, "Sarah's Law", which would require parental notification 48 hours prior to performing an abortion on a minor. However, the "Sarah" in Sarah's Law was a little girl in Texas who died on the abortion table. But her parents were eventually notified ... to come pick up their daughter's body.

Spend a moment to savor the full moonbat irony. On the left you have a Leftist bigot with a sign: "Christianity= Paganism= Heathens= Nazis Burn In Hell". Below that you have another Leftist whacko with a sign "Power to the Peaceful". Then you have the Leftist whackos all upset about how Alaskans cull wolf packs, while the abortion zealots circle overhead with a Palin mischaracterization.





"Jesse Jackson" appeared at the event and threatened to "cut off the balls" off all McCain-Palin (Bush III) supporters. This fan was not too concerned, since she does not have any balls, but I'd allow that her gonads are substantially bigger than his.

This Anti-Palin Polar Bear apparently "Votes With Her Brain Not Her Vagina", although we have no actual evidence of either. (Photo Courtesy of Ringo the Gringo at LGF)






So does "he".









Oh yes, back to Sarah Palin. I love this woman. She said "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country. This is not a man who sees America as you and I see America."

Douglass K. Daniel, a Liberal Associated Press "reporter" later characterized her statement as "racist" because obviously, all terrorists are "dark-skinned", even though Ayers is "white" ... Confusing isnt' it? Well it's an unbiased MSM "journalist" thing -- you wouldn't understand.

Unfortunately, I fear that we shall soon see Obama's vision for America quite clearly; it will be a chimera unlike anything our founding fathers would recognize.

Here are a lot more pictures from Digital Hairshirt. and Ringo the Gringo

Journalism is Dead

"Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation's wealth."

The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis

"One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.

I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don't laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:

"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)"

from:
"Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis"

by James Simpson
see the entire article at: The American Thinker
A must read for conservatives...

Suffer Not The Little Children To Worship The Almighty Barack Hussein Obama!

We're gonna spread happiness
We're gonna spread freedom
Obama's gonna change it
Obama's gonna lead 'em
We're gonna change it
And rearrange it
We're gonna change the world.

Sing For Change by Kathy Sawada

Yes we can
Lift each other up
In peace, in love, in hope
Change! Change!
sing...vote
Yes We Can! by Kathy Sawada





We pioneers are young Leninists
Our dream is to live like Lenin
I have no thought except 'I Love Lenin'
Lenin is our Superman

We are his little potatoes
Lenin is our sun, our leader, our life
Without him, our minds are empty...

Worship The Almighty Vladimir Lenin By Vladimr Lenin

Let All The Empty-minded Potato-heads Sing The Praises of the ObamaMessiah!

"If I am sitting pretty and you've got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can't, what's the big deal for me to say, I'm going to pay a little bit more? That's neighborliness."
-Barack Obama

"Neighborliness." Perhaps that word has a nonstandard meaning to someone whose home adjoined the property of convicted swindler Tony Rezko, but extracting money by force from someone who earned it in order to give it to someone who didn't is not usually spoken of as neighborly. If Citizen Obama, "sitting pretty," reaches into his own pocket and helps out the waitress with a large tip, he has shown a neighborly spirit. But there is nothing neighborly about using the tax code to compel someone else to pay the waitress that tip.

Taxation is not generosity, it is confiscation at gunpoint. Does Obama not understand the difference?

Perhaps he doesn't. Eager though he may be to compel "neighborliness" in others, he has not been nearly so avid about demonstrating it himself. Barack and Michelle Obama's tax returns show that from 2000 through 2004, when their adjusted gross income averaged nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year, their annual charitable donations amounted to just $2,154 - less than nine-tenths of 1 percent. Not until he entered the US Senate in 2005 and began to be spoken of as a presidential possibility did the Obamas' "neighborliness" become more evident. (In 2005-2007, they gave 5.5 percent of their income to charity.)

Obama claims his proposal would lower taxes for 95 percent of Americans, but well over 43 million tax returns, one-third of all those filed, already reflect an income tax liability of zero. In fact, Obama says, his plan would eliminate income taxes for an additional 10 million taxpayers. What he is really proposing, therefore, is not tax relief but a bald transfer of cash - $1,000 per family, he pledges - from the wealthiest Americans to everyone else...

[Y]ou don't have to be rich to be skeptical when a candidate argues that the top 1 percent of taxpayers, who already pay 40 percent of federal income taxes, aren't being taxed enough. Nor do you have to be an economist to wonder about the grasp of a nominee who tells 95 percent of the public that they can have something for nothing. Obamanomics may look pretty at first glance. But voters are focusing more closely now, and they can see beyond the lipstick.
-Jeff Jacoby

This is hilarious: Iowahawk's "It Takes A Village Of The Damned".