Know How Left the Left Leans…..Chapter I. Reading Dem Party Strategist, Ed Kilgore

In politics as in war the good people must know their opponents.  Ed Kilgore, is alleged to be a heavy weight Democrat Party strategist.   Let’s accept that and read what he has to say about his Marxist oriented Party and its future, in an article found at The New Republic: 

“This is the inaugural edition of Ed Kilgore’s new political column, the PERMANENT CAMPAIGN. Check back every week for obsessive coverage of the 2012 contest.

It’s time to smack down, once and for all, the idea that President Obama will face a serious primary challenger in 2012. This trope has been popping up ever since the 2008 general election, when horserace-hungry pundits speculated that Hillary Clinton would try to knock off the Democratic nominee four years down the road. And it’s only gotten worse with the rise of the “angry left,” which thinks Obama has been too eager to compromise with Wall Street and the Republicans, and considers itself the representative of the Democratic base.

Now, in the aftermath of this month’s “shellacking,” mischief-making pundits have seized on a couple of polls to burnish their narrative: One is from AP/KN in late October, showing that 47 percent of Democrats want the president to be challenged by another Democrat in 2012 (with 51 percent opposed); and one came from McClatchey/Marist just before Thanksgiving, showing 45 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents favoring a primary challenge (with 46 percent opposed).

Sounds pretty dangerous for Obama, right? Well no. For a substantive primary challenge to occur, a coherent bloc of Democratic voters—whether liberal or moderate—would have to sour on Obama and coalesce behind another candidate in such a way that threatens the president’s hold over his base. There’s just no sign of that happening. For instance, the very same AP/KN poll shows that three-quarters of Democrats want to see the president re-elected; i.e., they’re not really discontented with Obama and they just like the idea of a primary that gives them options. Likewise, the McClatchy/Marist survey doesn’t show a single bloc fed up with Obama and preparing to bolt for a latter-day Howard Dean: Given a choice of hypothetical challenges, 39 percent of Democrats and leaners preferred a candidate from the left of the president, and 40 percent a candidate from the right.

What’s more, Obama’s straight approval ratings among rank-and-file Democrats are very high. According to Gallup’s latest weekly tracking poll, 81 percent of self-identified Democrats give Obama a positive job approval rating. Among liberal Democrats, who are supposedly the most likely to rebel, the number rises to 85 percent. Let’s compare that to the last three Democratic presidents, two of whom faced serious primary challenges: At equivalent points in their presidencies, Bill Clinton had a positive job rating among Democrats of 74 percent; Jimmy Carter’s rating was 63 percent; and Lyndon Johnson had a rating of 66 percent. And Carter’s and LBJ’s numbers had to fall by ten or twenty more points before either attracted another contender. 

The racial politics of the Democratic Party also make a serious primary challenge less likely. Sure, some progressives have been raging at Obama as of late. But anyone credibly threatening to topple Obama would have to pry away a significant chunk of Obama’s support among African Americans—and in case you haven’t noticed, Obama is the first black president. His job approval rating among African Americans is currently 89 percent, and it has not gone below 85 percent at any point of his presidency. Can you conceive of a left-wing revolt that runs directly counter to the manifest wishes of the largest and most loyal segment of the Democratic base? Imagine Hillary Clinton launching her 2008 candidacy without any of the goodwill that her husband’s presidency had engendered among African Americans.

Above all, primary challenges to incumbent presidents require a galvanizing issue. It’s very doubtful that the grab-bag of complaints floated by the Democratic electorate—Obama’s legislative strategy during the health care fight; his relative friendliness to Wall Street; gay rights; human rights; his refusal to prosecute Bush administration figures for war crimes or privacy violations—would be enough to spur a serious challenge. And while Afghanistan is an increasing source of Democratic discontent, it’s hardly Vietnam, and Obama has promised to reduce troop levels sharply by 2012.

Most importantly, who would run? Hillary Clinton has ruled it out categorically. Al Gore’s electioneering days appear to be long over. There’s been talk of Russ Feingold running (mainly based on a misunderstanding of an “I’ll be back” statement he made on election night which seems to have referred to a future Senate race). Dean would win headlines, but has a poor reputation in Iowa, where any progressive challenge would have to be launched. There are no guaranteed primary vote-getters out there like Estes Kefauver in 1952, and certainly no one close to the stature of Ted Kennedy. And there’s a reason no incumbent president has actually been defeated for re-nomination since the nineteenth century.

So that’s it. What we are likely to see is a marginal opponent: a Dennis Kucinich, or a Harold Ford, or some celebrity who hasn’t held office but is willing to spend some money. More serious comers will be chased away by the hard, cold reality of what it would take to mount a presidential campaign against the White House in places like Iowa and Nevada and New Hampshire and South Carolina. And President Obama will be left facing challengers similar to Pete McCloskey or John Ashbrook, who came at Richard Nixon from the left and right, respectively, in 1972. To the extent that these candidates are remembered at all, it’s as roadkill on the way to Nixon’s renomination.”

(Just a comment to say I’ll bet he is right on this one….  It could be that a narrower mind such as that owned by Russ Feingold may give himself some juice called publicity from the Left, I don’t feel Hillary is going to go into civil war with Obama unless his ratings really plunge below the thirty per cent of Dems mark.   That just isn’t going to happen with a riled inner city population racially motivated to back the president no matter what he does.

Political Ads Leftier Than President Obama, Enter the Lame Duck Session

Voting Americans should not forget that the National Democrat Party is the richer of our two major political parties. They should also not forget that the sources for their wealth are even more leftwing than the president himself.

Americans and president Obama will be bombarded with ads such as those recorded at HotAir:

Click on:

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/12/01/new-liberal-ads-dont-sell-out-to-the-gop-on-the-bush-tax-cuts-obama/

What Could Julian Assange Be Thinking Of? Michael Totten of Pajamas Media, Pokes Into Julies’ Mind.

and, Michael Totten, at Pajamas Media,  finds  ”its founder Julien Assange’s blog archive interesting. Here’s the first paragraph. Good luck.

The truth is not found on the page, but is a wayward sprite that bursts forth from the readers mind for reasons of its own. I once thought that the Truth was a set comprised of all the things that were true, and the big truth could be obtained by taking all its component propositions and evaluating them until nothing remained. I would approach my rhetorical battles as a logical reductionist, tearing down, atomizing, proving, disproving, discarding falsehoods and reassembling truths until the Truth was pure, golden and unarguable. But then, when truth matters most, when truth is the agent of freedom, I stood before Justice and with truth, lost freedom. Here was something fantastical, unbelievable and impossible, you could prove that (A => B) and (B => C) and (C => D) and (D => F) Justice would nod its head and agree, but then, when you turned to claim your coup de grace, A => F irrevocably, Justice would demur and revoke the axiom of transitivity, for Justice will not be told when F stands for freedom. Transitivity is evoked when Justice imagines F and finding the dream a pleasurable one sets about gathering cushions to prop up their slumber. Here then is the truth about the Truth; the Truth is not bridge, sturdy to every step, a marvel of bound planks and supports from the known into the unknown, but a surging sea of smashed wood, flotsam and drowning sailors. So first, always pick your poetic metaphor, to make the reader want to believe, then the facts, and — miracle! — transitivity will descend from heaven, invoked as justification for prejudice.

He includes a Harvard email address and pretentiously calls this twaddle, IQ.org.”

Comment:  Julian certainly is modern.  Let’s take a look at his Australian language and what it produces.

The following is a clip from his  blog writings:

“Wed 20 Dec 2006 : black hawk down, white wash up

Something worth noting about the unusual relative power of community building islamist movements when operating against well funded US led democracy wagons as evidenced by the recent victories of the Somali UIC; the promise of better shopping does not move the heart to the great acts of love or sacrifice required in war. “Democracy” is a difficult abstraction that is easily abused (try drawing it). It is a means to an end, not the end itself. There’s no instinctive desire for democracy. Consider the US Declaration of Independence (1776), a document which is the distillation of psychological forces which drove men to civil war and kept them there. What are those forces?

…God.. Creator.. Men are created equal… Life, Liberty,… pursuit of Happiness.. Safety and Happiness… [followed by 26(!) paragraphs of hatred for the abuses of King George].

In other words, religious feeling (x2), equality, life, liberty, happiness (x2), safety and above all, an extreme hatred for the brutal acts, preferment, and corruption of foreign influenced or controlled government.

Not once does democracy or shopping appear.

This doesn’t bode well for the Iraqi provisional authority — at least the British spoke the same language.”

Delving deeper into Julian’s mind, we find Australia:

“Wed 03 Jan 2007 : The Australian lagoon

Australia is a lagoon in a sea of english which, having no translation tarrif, washes over us, sweeps our new thoughts away and blends into those that remain, until we no longer know whose thoughts we are.Industries can dump pig iron to crush foreign production and they can also dump words. Billions of these ideas, already produced for another english market and having no translation tarrifs or transport costs slither into the country unheeded, stricken local journalists and set their burrows in our brains.

We’re part of the big english world; this is our reality — so when we fight, we must fight like kings. When we write about the sea we must write to the sea.”

Mr. Allange is a world traveler. moving his mind from  the lagoon to the ‘United Soviet of America’ to stretch  his expertise.

 

Sat 09 Jun 2007 : The United what of America?

It has been frequently noted that many corporations exceed nation states in GDP. It has been less frequently noted that some also exceed them in population (employees).But it is odd that the comparison hasn’t been taken further. Since so many live in the state of the corporation, let us take the comparison seriously and ask the following question. What kind of states are giant corporations?

In comparing countries, after the easy observations of population size and GDP, it is usual to compare the system of government, the major power groupings and the civic freedoms available to their populations.

The corporation as a nation state has the following properties:

• Suffrage (the right to vote) does not exist except for land holders (“share holders”) and even there voting power is in proportion to land ownership.
• All executive power flows from a central committee. Female representation is almost unknown.
• There is no division of powers. There is no forth estate. There are no juries and innocence is not presumed.
• Failure to submit to any order can result in instant exile.
• There is no freedom of speech. There is no right of association. Love is forbidden without state approval.
• The economy is centrally planned.
• There is pervasive surveillance of movement and electronic communication.
• The society is heavily regulated and this regulation is enforced, to the degree many employees are told when, where and how many times a day they can goto the toilet.
• There is almost no transparency and something like the FOIA is unimaginable.
• The state has one party. Opposition groups (unions) are banned, surveilled or marginalized whenever and wherever possible.

These large multinationals, despite having a GDP and population comparable to Belgium, Denmark or New Zealand have nothing like their quality of civic freedoms. Internally they mirror the most pernicious aspects of the 1960s Soviet. This even more striking when the civilising laws of region the company operates in are weak (e.g West Pupua or South Korea). There one can see the behavior of these new states clearly, unobscured by their surroundings.

If small business and non-profits are eliminated from the US, then what’s left? Some kind of federation of Communist states.

A United Soviet of America.”   ……….And I, having spent some time in both countries, the living one and the dead Soviet one, believe  Mr. Allange is stretching some, don’t you think?

There you have it, folks.  Our Julian Assange of Australia and the world…..a thoroughly modern Julie.

Why the Obama Vacation While Wikileaks Leaked GW Stuff?

Michael Goodwin at the New York Post writes:

“FIRST, the Obama administration did nothing to stop this disaster when it had a chance. The almost-certain leaker, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, was hostile to the military as far back as January. That month, he wrote on his Facebook page, “Bradley Manning didn’t want this fight. Too much to lose, too fast,” according to London’s Daily Telegraph.

It reports that in May, serving at a base near Baghdad, he changed his status to “Bradley Manning is now left with the sinking feeling that he doesn’t have anything left.”

Five days later, Manning, openly gay and half-British, wrote that he was “livid” after being “lectured by ex-boyfriend.” He was arrested that month for leaking a video of a helicopter attack, and is still being held. By then, he already had downloaded 250,000 documents and given them to WikiLeaks, an anti-American site based in Iceland.

The first batch, released in July, detailed US battle reports in Afghanistan and included the names of informants.

Manning is no whistleblower. He is a traitor and should be charged with treason. He betrayed his nation in a time of war.

SECOND, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was derelict in not trying to stop the release. It was not until Saturday, when it was well-known the documents were about to be published, that a State Department lawyer wrote to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and told him to stop. That’s pathetically little and late.

Clinton now calls the release “illegal” and says publication “puts people’s lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries.”

Granted — so why didn’t she move hell and high water to block it? Her failure to act is a major black mark against her.

THIRD, nobody in government, except Manning, has been held responsible. That must change. How can it be that a lowly, twisted private could get access to so much confidential communication and download it with nobody knowing?

One sleuth we can’t count on is Attorney General Eric Holder. He talked tough about a probe, then left for Switzerland to lobby for bringing the 2022 World Cup soccer games to the United States.

Maybe he’ll run into Assange on this outrageous junket.

FOURTH, The New York Times, the only American paper to get the documents, should not have published them.

The Times says it got them from The Guardian, a left-wing British paper, and denies it is “partnering” with WikiLeaks. That’s a distinction without a difference.

We have edited out any information that could identify confidential sources — including informants, dissidents, academics and human-rights activists — or otherwise compromise national security,” Times executive editor Bill Keller told readers.

Yet Keller admitted the Times told WikiLeaks what it was withholding. That reflects an undeserved trust that WikiLeaks will not flag that information for our enemies.

The Times also forfeits its claim to being a neutral observer. It can’t very well say the documents aren’t newsworthy after devoting pages to them. Nor can it criticize the White House for failing to safeguard them, after being the instrument of their release.

FIFTH, why is President Obama hiding?

The White House press secretary said only that Obama was “not happy” with the release. The president, meanwhile, is trying to look busy, busy on other things. Monday, he announced his plan to freeze federal wages, and yesterday, he gave a short speech after meeting with GOP leaders.

He took no questions and never mentioned the largest security breach in American history.

HE’S THE BOSS

“There will be one person in charge. Make no mistake about that.”

With that declaration, Mayor Bloomberg aimed to put to rest the idea that new Chancellor Cathie Black would be sharing power with her chief academic deputy. Legally, he’s right, but there is another, inadvertent meaning to the mayor’s words as well.

With Joel Klein moving off stage, and with Black’s education views a blank slate, the mayor, more than ever, becomes “the one person in charge.”

Nine years into his reign, Bloomy’s decision to replace Klein removes a buffer and any plausible deniability. Their good-cop, bad-cop routine insulated the mayor from most school failures, while earning him national praise for its successes.

Klein treated the teachers union as a piñata, while the mayor gave them raises of 43 percent without demanding major reforms. The unpopular Klein became a lightning rod, and Bloomy got a third term by floating above the messy details.

Over time, the act evolved into a true contradiction. Bloomberg eventually concluded he needed better relations with the union and a better manager at the Department of Education. His opening came when city scores plummeted after the state toughened tests and raised passing rates, effectively erasing four years of city gains.

To get Black approved for the job, Bloomberg had to promise she would promote an experienced educator with wide latitude. Ever sensitive to prerogative, he now prefers to cast that credential compromise as incidental.

It was not because state officials were prepared to block Black if the mayor had not capitulated. In the end, as I predicted, they found a way to get what they wanted while giving Bloomberg his choice.

But that choice creates a new dynamic, one that directly exposes the mayor to school results. If Black makes measurable progress, he will get full credit for thinking boldly.

If she fails, he’ll be on the hook big time for appointing someone ill suited for the job.

Either way, it’s his baby now.”

Comment:  It is strange that for months when Wikileaks was first spilling out on GW era of material, the Obama administrtion did nothing to stop the leaks or confront Julian Assange.  As of today now that the load of embarrassment it Obama’s or some might say Hillary’s, we hear reports that Wikileaks site has been shut down……a power American intelligence possessed all the time.   Again, one wonders about devious Obama motives.  His leftist political fans claim Barack Hussein knows all and at all times is bright and clever.  Accepting this theory, who was supposed to be the Obama fall ‘guy’ in this Obama scheme, Hillary or GW?

Obama is a severe critic of things American, the basis for his Marxist persuasion.  He is the first such president in American history.

Some interesting Post gossip:

Longing for Dubya

A liberal friend, a big Democratic fund-raiser, sees the light. After railing against Obama as a confused and confusing president, he concluded with this: “You know, I watched George Bush’s whole interview on ‘The Today Show’ and I realized I missed him. I didn’t like him or his policies, but at least you know who he was and what he believed. I miss that.”

 More hot air from Gore

Al Gore is coming clean about clean energy. In a speech in Greece, he said ethanol subsidies he sup ported were wrong, and confessed: “One of the rea sons I made that mistake is that I paid particular atten tion to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fond ness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.” He is not forgiven.

Pentagon “Chose” Not to Shut Down Wikileaks

Hot Air gives us this item put together by Allahpundit:

“I hope he’s telling the truth. Because if our cyberwar unit is so weak that they can’t hit a few servers in Sweden, then I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords. The key question: Was this decision driven chiefly by military or political concerns? Could be that the Pentagon suspects foreign powers are monitoring Wikileaks’ servers in hopes of picking up clues about U.S. cyber capabilities in case we attack. Or, it could be that The One fears a five-alarm First Amendment freakout among his base if he dares to knock down an outfit that’s dedicated to compromising U.S. foreign policy with stolen documents. Or, just maybe, the Pentagon realized that taking down the Wikileaks site would achieve nothing since Assange would doubtless end up passing the stolen cables to newspapers anyway. If you think this incident is embarrassing for the U.S. now, imagine the humiliation involved in the Pentagon torpedoing Wikileaks and then seeing the documents turn up on page one of the Times. Sheer impotence.

As for the report linked this morning in Headlines about Wikileaks being hosted on Amazon’s servers, rest easy: You won’t have to do your Christmas shopping elsewhere after all. They were summarily booted this afternoon after congressional staff politely inquired with Amazon as to how this arrangement came to be. According to the AP, server space can be rented from the company on a “self-serve basis,” suggesting that Amazon might not have realized until today just who their new client was. I find that hard to believe given the amount of traffic that must have been flooding in, but then I also find it hard to believe that Amazon wouldn’t have dumped them instantly had they known lest a U.S. boycott cripple their Christmas sales season. (Media reports about the Amazon/Wikileaks were available as early as Monday afternoon.) In any case, Wikileaks has responded with a scathing indictment of Amazon’s lack of respect for the First Amendment, which, according to Wikileaks, apparently somehow constitutionally requires private businesses to host organizations that might be criminally liable under the Espionage Act. Good work, Julian.

“Few Competent Public Officials Go Unpunished!!!”

“Few Competent Public Officials Go Unpunished!!!”

What a great title!!  I’d like to lay claim to have created it, but alas someone at the Philadelphis Inquirer got the light before anyone else, I guess.  At least the excamation points are mine.

I think immediately of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the early one as Governor of California.  A neophyte as a public official, he wanted to do good and help California grow out of its narcissism, drugginess, and public union dictatorships.   The Democrat Party establishment put an immediate stop to that, and backed by the sour and spoiled,  the gays and unions, the blacks and latinos, the felons and rapists, gangsters and thieves, the usual suspects enjoying California sun, it flexed its muscles and scared the actor into the closet of girlymen to redefine his image.

Arnold did so and became complicit in aiding the failing blue state fail further.

Here is another outstanding article.  It tells us a bit about Sayre’s Law.

By Robert Maranto and Patrick J. Wolf”When Washington public schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee recently “resigned to spend more time with her family,” as the saying goes, it reminded us of Sayre’s Law. The late, great Columbia University political scientist Wallace Sayre put it this way more than a half-century ago: “Public and private management are fundamentally alike in all unimportant respects.”

The public and private sectors differ in terms of time horizons (election cycles vs. long-term planning), personnel (tenured vs. accountable), bosses (535 members of Congress vs. one CEO), and media relations (fishbowl vs. trade secrets). Most important, they have starkly different measures of performance.

In the private sector, success means making money. True, clever CEOs can fudge the numbers for a time, but for business frauds, jail awaits. Because government helps keep business honest, private-sector profits ultimately determine success.

But in the public sector, success is whatever campaigning politicians and distracted voters deem it to be – whether public organizations are working well, working badly, or not working at all. Government does not do a very good job of policing itself. And prominent public-administration academics routinely rank results as far less important than process – that is, following even the most trivial rules and procedures. New York City schools Chancellor Joel Klein once admitted that special-education programs treat teachers better if they fill out the forms but fail to teach than if they teach well but mishandle the paperwork.

This basic difference between the public and private sectors means that a business CEO who makes his or her shareholders money will be rewarded with generous contracts, public veneration, and six-figure book deals. In contrast, a government manager who improves an agency may get promoted, but is equally likely to get the ax for upsetting powerful interests or making others look bad.

Examples abound. New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton presided over the start of an unprecedented decline in crime during his brief tenure, from 1994 to 1996, as he documented in Turnaround. Unfortunately, though, police chiefs are not fired or promoted based on crime rates.

That’s partly because sociology and criminal-justice professors have long argued that police can’t cut crime – a view in which mediocre police chiefs take comfort. Because cops supposedly can’t fight crime, police commissioners are judged not by crime rates, but by whether they avoid scandals and make the mayor look good.

As onetime Bratton colleague and former Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney wrote in his book, Beat Cop to Top Cop, this sort of thinking led New York police brass to micromanage patrol officers and squash initiative in the name of controlling corruption. And New York had a record 2,245 homicides in 1990.

Bratton was able to change the department’s culture of compliance into a culture of crime-fighting. But once he grew more popular than his patron, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, he became a political threat and was forced to resign. So the most effective police commissioner in the nation was fired for successfully fighting crime.

It’s much the same today in Washington. Police Chief Cathy Lanier cut the murder rate only to face becoming part of the unemployment rate. (Her future under a new mayor remains unclear.) And the numbers show that Bratton and Lanier are not alone.

Our graduate student Michael McShane analyzed homicide rates per capita and police chief tenures for America’s 10 largest cities from 1990 to 2009, and he found no statistical relationship between the two. The data suggest that mayors, city council members, the media, and ultimately the voters, show no desire to reward successful crime-fighters with job security, or to push time-serving satraps into early retirement.

Lanier’s sister in public service, schools Chancellor Rhee, had even more success in an even tougher job. The Council of the Great City Schools’ “Beating the Odds” report ranks Washington first among the nation’s 60 largest school systems in gains on standardized test scores, which occurred during Rhee’s tenure.

Unfortunately, Rhee’s reforms ran afoul of politically powerful groups, most notably the Washington Teachers’ Union. Rhee had the guts to identify and fire ineffective teachers, which the union could not abide. Just days after Mayor Adrian Fenty lost his reelection bid to a union-backed candidate, Rhee was sent packing.

No doubt Rhee’s successor will take the lesson to heart: Teaching the children matters less than pleasing the union.

When we look at how politicians and the public treat outstanding public servants, it’s not hard to see why many feel the private sector works better. William Bratton, Cathy Lanier, and Michelle Rhee are poster children for privatization. Is that what supporters of public service want?”

Comment:  It is sure comforting to know who we are.

---

Robert Maranto and Patrick J. Wolf are professors in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. They can be reached at rmaranto@uark.edu and pwolf@uark.edu.

//

Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20101201_Good_government_is_a_risky_business.html#ixzz16u2qxViO
Watch sports videos you won’t find anywhere else

NJ. Gov. Chris Christie’s Plan of “Shared Sacrifice” for Public Education and Its Saboteurs

Most of you readers know well that today, most states habitually run by Democrats and Rinos over the past twenty years have finally collapsed into pits in and around official bankruptcy.   Obama America isn’t too far behind.

Click on this video.  Identify the struggle.  Describe the character and nature of the major opponents:

Whose side are you on?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/12/01/gov_christie_education_reform_the_seminal_civil_rights_issue_of_our_time.html

New Video of Governor Chris Christies Battle Against the New Jersey Education Establishment!

Governor Christie has accepted the challenge as a newly elected governor in 2009 to confront  the various establishments withing government who have been primarily responsible for  bankrupting the state of New Jersey over the past twenty years.

Among them, but not alone, is the NJEA….the teachers’ union, the New Jersey Educational Association.   He discovered the annuaul income of the NJEA is $131,000,000…….and that, by leftwing law includes payment from every public school teacher in New Jersey whether they are a member of the union or not.

That leaves the NJEA as one of the richest dictators of policy in the state and for years it has dictated who becomes Governor of the state and what that Governor will or will not do regarding  public  education in the state.

Public education in the state of New Jersey is  rotting as it is in most states…..despite the billions and billions paid by taxpayers to fatten a flawed, corrupt, and in some cases, an anti American institution.

Those of us who have been teachers in a public school system a often attacked for our “incompetence” when friction of some sort arises in a district.   The public forgets that the children and young adults who attend these classrooms, these days, are putty in the hands of Marxist propagandists, such as terrorist man, Bill Ayers, who often openly and proudly admit their Communist  associations and  plot their antiAmerican politics at your  corner university’s Department of Education.    Here, these, among them the most anti-intellectual radicals in our population ’guide’  our teachers of today politically what to teach and how to teach what  should be taught.  

It is here the hates against Marxists critics are strongest.  It is here education, that is the teaching of  knowledge to reduce the unknown, is perverted.   It is here our youth learns to worship forced equality and  hate its  enemies of enemies of Marxist dognma.  Blacks are to hate black criticss as racist.   Gays and Lesbians are to hate critics as homophobes.   The modern feminist womyn is to hate critics as sexists.   Union workers are to hate the non-union world for its greed.

Governor Chris Christie’s main objective at this time seems to be clear.  He wants to restore financial health, and therefore a spot of moral health back  to  the state of New Jersey a state of  these United States, as an exemplary community led by  responsible voting and spending adults.

Click on to view a new video and learn more about  his policy  of “Shared Sacrifice” and some of the obstacles it faces:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/12/01/gov_christie_education_reform_the_seminal_civil_rights_issue_of_our_time.html

Democrats Unable to Debate the Issues, Plot to Go for the Kill!

Politics as Warfare….John Hinderaker at Powerline.

“This morning three Democratic Party strategists, Ed Kilgore, James Vega and J. P. Green, sent out a “strategy memo” that was titled, rather clumsily: “Beyond ‘Sabotage’ — The Central Issue About the Growing Political Extremism of the Republican Party Is That It’s Undermining Fundamental American Standards of Ethical Political Conduct and Behavior.” That’s quite a charge; what evidence do the authors offer in support of it?

They begin by referring to a Washington Monthly article in which a blogger named Steve Benen “gave voice to a growing and profoundly disturbing concern among Democrats–that Republicans may actually plan to embrace policies designed to deny Obama not only political victories but also the maximum possible economic growth during his term in order weaken Democratic prospects in the 2012 elections.” This is a remarkably silly theory. If Republicans really wanted to retard economic growth, they would join with the Obama administration in raising taxes, increasing regulations and proceeding with the government takeover of medicine and destruction of small business. But they aren’t doing that. Instead, Republicans are advocating the same policies they do when a Republican administration is in power: lower taxes, less regulation, a strong national defense. Democrats and Republicans disagree, of course, as to how economic growth can best be promoted. The disagreement that is now playing out in Washington is a continuation of the same debate we have witnessed for the past forty to fifty years.

Beyond that easily-dismissed charge, what do the authors have to say? They allege that Republicans have adopted a “politics as warfare” philosophy that is unprecedented in American history and amounts, really, to sedition:

There is a deep apprehension that fundamental American standards of proper political conduct and ethical political behavior are increasingly being violated.

The key feature that distinguishes the increasingly extremist perspective of today’s Republican Party from the standards of political behavior we have traditionally considered proper in America is the view that politics is–quite literally, and not metaphorically–a kind of warfare and political opponents are literally “enemies.”

Barack Obama, October 2010:

If Latinos sit out the election instead of, “we’re going to punish our enemies and we’re going to reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us” — if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s going to be harder.

So the Democrats are engaging in “politics as warfare”? Apparently that isn’t what the authors have in mind. They continue:

This “politics as warfare” perspective has historically been the hallmark of many extremist political parties of both the ideological left and ideological right–parties ranging from the American Communist Party to the French National Front.

Wow. So what, exactly, have the Republicans done that merits comparisons with the Communist Party? Here are some of the hallmarks of “politics as warfare:”

* In the politics as warfare perspective extralegal measures, up to and including violence, are tacitly endorsed as a legitimate means to achieve a party’s political aims if democratic means are insufficient to obtain its objectives.

* In the politics as warfare perspective all major social problems are caused by the deliberate, malevolent acts of powerful elites with nefarious motives. An evil “them” is the cause of all society’s ills.

* In the politics as warfare perspective the political party’s philosophy and basic strategy is inerrant–it cannot be wrong. The result is the creation of a closed system of ideologically controlled “news” that creates an alternative reality.

* In the politics as warfare perspective standard norms of honesty are irrelevant. Lying and the use of false propaganda are considered necessary and acceptable. The “truth” is what serves to advance the party’s objectives.

* In the politics as warfare perspective the creation of contrived “incidents” or deliberate provocations are acceptable. Because the adherent of this view “knows” that his or her opponents are fundamentally evil, even concocted or staged incidents are still morally and ethically “true.” The distinction between facts and distortions disappears.

There is more, but you get the picture. Republicans are prone to violence, inhabit an alternative reality, and constantly lie. (I’m not quite sure what the “contrived ‘incidents’” are.) So those are the charges; what is the evidence? It is remarkably thin:

It is easy to see examples of the various politics as warfare- based views and tactics listed above directly reflected in the statements and actions of the extreme wing of Republican coalition–they range from Michelle Bachmann and Sharon Angle’s winking at violence with references to “second amendment remedies”…

Sharron Angle did once refer to “Second Amendment remedies,” Michele Bachmann never has. The idea that either Bachmann or Angle has “winked at violence” is ridiculous. To begin with, what violence? A large majority of all political violence in the United States in recent years has been perpetrated by liberals (often union goons) with Republicans, conservatives and Tea Party activists as the victims. All Michele Bachmann has ever done is advocate tirelessly for conservative principles and beat Democrats at the polls; hence the bitter hatred with which she is viewed by liberals like the authors of this “strategy memo.”

…to Andrew Breitbart’s deliberate editing of a video to smear Shirley Sherrod…

This is a lie. Breitbart did no such thing.

Glenn Beck’s suggesting that George Soros was a Nazi collaborator…

Actually, Beck paraphrased Soros’s own description of his youth during World War II on 60 Minutes, except that he added, “Here’s a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps.” I don’t think that is a fair characterization of Soros’s account, but does it justify the authors’ claim about “politics as warfare”? Obviously not.

…Fox News’ tolerating attacks on Obama as equivalent to Hitler…

Really? Like most Democrat attacks on Fox News, this smear is intended for those who never actually watch Fox. Every Fox host I’ve seen would dismiss as ridiculous any claimed analogy between Obama and Hitler. The same cannot be said, however, of MSNBC during the Bush administration.

…and airing repeated suggestions that the miniscule New Black Panthers present a real and genuine national threat of stolen elections…

This one is pretty funny. Here we have an actual threat of violence–thugs armed with billy clubs forming a gauntlet in front of a polling place–on behalf of Democratic Party candidates, and these Democrats think that if you oppose that sort of intimidation, you are engaging in “politics as warfare,” just like a Communist or Nazi party–an exact inversion of the truth.

…and Grover Norquist’s endorsement of a government shutdown over extending the debt limit, despite the genuine dangers this poses to international financial stability.

How pathetic! The authors are trying to show that Republicans are engaged in “warfare,” an unprecedented attack on American political traditions, and a flirtation, or worse, with violence, and this is the best they can do? I have no opinion on whether it is a good idea or a bad idea to refuse to extend the federal debt limit so as to enable even more deficit spending, but it is safe to say that neither side of that debate is engaged in “politics as warfare,” like the Communists.

That’s it. Seriously. That’s all the “warfare” the authors can come up with. They continue with this observation:

Republican leaders are now under enormous pressure to maintain a very belligerent, warlike rhetoric and style in all their activities. John Boehner is, after all, in the line of succession begun by Newt Gingrich, the first Republican congressional leader to explicitly argue for politics as a form of warfare (In 1994 Gingrich said: “This war [between liberals and conservatives] has to be fought with the scale and duration and savagery that is only true of civil wars”)…

Actually, Gingrich said that in 1988, after Senate Democrats disgracefully slandered Robert Bork–a genuine instance of politics as warfare. His next words were, “While we are lucky in this country that our civil wars are fought at the ballot box, not on the battlefields, nonetheless this is a civil war.” But what, exactly, is the point here? The authors resurrect Newt Gingrich’s most incendiary quote of the last 30 years and it is supposed to be a news flash? Why isn’t the proper inference that the Republicans’ Congressional leadership has gotten more moderate? They continue:

…and Tom DeLay, who now faces a prison sentence for his own indifference to the legal prohibitions against hyper-partisan scorched-earth tactics.

Actually, DeLay was convicted of a specific, technical violation of Texas campaign finance law. That conviction was unjust and, we hope, will be reversed. DeLay’s prosecution was politically motivated–an instance of the Democrats’ effort to criminalize opposition to their hegemony, or, one might say, the Democrats’ waging of politics as warfare. But again, this isn’t exactly news.

The authors have one more bit of “evidence” to offer:

Here is just one recent example of how deeply the politics as warfare perspective has become embedded in the Republican worldview. On November 29th Rep. Joe Barton, seeking support to become head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee told the Republican leadership:5 “Speaker Boehner is our Dwight Eisenhower in the battle against the Obama Administration. Majority Leader Cantor is our Omar Bradley. I want to be George Patton–put anything in my scope and I will shoot it.”

So the use of any military metaphor is a sign of “politics as warfare,” an unprecedented departure from American political traditions? That, again, is plainly silly: one could easily recite hundreds instances of use of military metaphors by politicians of both parties, dating back for two centuries. Or do these Democratic strategists seriously believe that Congressman Barton was proposing to shoot Democrats?

In fact, if one were looking for over-the-top political rhetoric, Democratic politicians and pundits would provide a far more fertile field than Republicans. The soon-to-be-departed Alan Grayson alone has outdone the entire Republican Party. It was a Democratic radio network, not a Republican one, that featured assassination humor; it is a Democratic cable news channel, not a Republican one, that peddles hysteria and brands anyone who disagrees as the “worst person in the world.” It is Democrats, not Republicans, who are so lost in a fog of hatred that more than one-third of them say that September 11 was an inside job.

So this Democratic line of attack is, if possible, even sillier than usual. But what is the point? The “strategy memo” went out to an audience of Democrats (and a few political junkies like me). Presumably the authors are not so out of touch with reality as to believe that they have made a persuasive case. Rather, one guesses that this is just one of many efforts to coordinate the party’s talking points. No doubt “politics as warfare” is a theme that Democrats will try to sell to voters over the coming months. But they will have to enforce a considerably higher standard of conduct in their own ranks if they want anyone to take them seriously.”

Comment:  This is a terrific article about current Democrat Party leadership thinking about America, its history, its democracy, and party opponents.  It is the inevitable residue from a corrupt educational system now populated by the freaks getting their jollies from drugs, sex, bombs, riots, kidnappings and killings  during the American cultural revolution of the late 1960s and the 1970s and their offspring, biological and otherwise.  Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn are certainly among its proudest members.  These are Marxists.  The 2010 National Democratic Party is not at all the Democratic Party of Bill and Hillary Clinton of the 1990s or of most of your local American communities, except in the enclaves of victimhood populations.

For examples of this stench and residue entrenched in your local corner university or college, please read David Horowitz’s review of  the modern university, Marxist controlled social science curricula in his book, “One Party Classroom”.

---

Why Are the Congressional “Has-beens”, Arlen Specter, Russ Feingold, Alan Grayson, etc. Voting on Anything?

By David Harsanyi….the Denver Post:

It was a moment of inadvertent public honesty. An open C-SPAN microphone caught the often-beleaguered Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., lamenting the impotence of this congressional lame-duck session.

“It’s all rigged,” Bennet griped Monday. “The whole conversation is rigged. The fact that we don’t get to a discussion before the break about what we’re going to do in the lame duck is just rigged.”

A Bennet aide later explained that, yes, Washington is “broken” and that “we can’t move forward on major issues facing our country because of a broken system that is rigged to prevent progress.”

We should be so lucky. I join with all Americans who dream of a day when Washington is broken enough to see a Congress rigged to prevent any more “progress.” But the trouble with lame-duck sessions happens to be the opposite. It is one thing to be abused by democracy and quite another to be abused by a bunch of rejected, disgruntled and disconnected politicians.

This is a long-standing grievance, of course. Way back in 1932 (I just learned on the Internet), Congress passed the 20th Amendment. Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman recently pointed out that at the time, Time magazine claimed it would “eliminate the legislative influence of Senators & Representatives whose constituencies have already repudiated them.”

And lame-duck sessions happen to induce two destructive political habits: avoidance and action.

Avoidance. Remember the endlessly discussed “bipartisan deficit commission”? Practically speaking, it will probably amount to little. Politically speaking, it rigged the election to allow candidates from both parties (Bennet included) to defer their answers on one of the most serious issues of the day. Hey, they were eagerly awaiting the commission’s recommendations on the issue, which would arrive, not surprisingly, during the lame-duck session.

But action is far worse.

You could argue that Congress has a responsibility to deal with impending issues — unemployment benefits extensions or tax hikes, for instance. But should “repudiated” officials be involved in making long-lasting decisions for all of us?

Remember that the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002, when a lame-duck Congress relied on post-9/11 jitters to create the largest government bureaucracy in American history. A lame-duck Congress impeached the president in 1998.

This year, the lame-duck session will likely take up the DREAM Act, which would institute a major change in immigration policy, and a new nuclear arms treaty with an erstwhile democracy in Russia. The Senate already passed the so-called Food Safety Modernization Act.

Pollsters tell us that an increasingly cynical electorate, which viewed government as overreaching, was responsible for the dramatic political reversal in November.

So does it make any sense to allow rejected senators — such as Robert Bennett, Blanche Lincoln and Arlen Specter — to help kill earmark reform in the Senate this week, seeing as none of them will experience the consequences of voting to preserve a corrupted process?

Congress has the choice to convene or not — the latter being a true victory for progress.

But if Washington is “broken,” it is by those who abuse power in the name of moving forward. And the lame-duck Congress is just another example.”

(The title of this Denver Post writing is, “End the Lame Duck Sessions”.)