On The Aims of Black Communism

The dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. "was to make everything equal in everybody's house."

-- Al Sharpton, Danbury, CT, May 2, 2010 (video here)

Obama Defies Us Every Step Of The Way, And Revels In Doing So

Noemie Emery complains here that Obama has "disregarded civility," but doesn't seem to want to face what Obama knows better than anyone: that this is a permanent war by a commie president against a democratic people, and that his recent calls for tolerance mean only that he needs time to catch his breath in the tough work of almost singlehandedly overthrowing a country from within.

Why Americans Can't Face The Meaning Of Barack Obama

The words are from a different time, but as you read them, imagine they are written about this time and this situation, about Obama, his allies, their program, methods and objectives:

If people in the West find it hard to bear this vision of merciless struggle between the two forms of society [Communist and democratic], if they sometimes drive it out of their minds, it is partly because the socialist cause was forged within the democracies themselves in the nineteenth century, was one of their offspring that became an independent component of political life. We have trouble understanding that this offspring's heir presumptive, twentieth-century communism, has assumed the historical mission of destroying the democracy from which it issued. We persist in viewing it as just another political persuasion that may have degenerated but which can mend its ways, calm down, participate someday in a global concert. To think otherwise, we feel, sins against tolerance. Unfortunately, the democracies are not making the rules in this game. The Communists in no way share their concern for tolerance and the coexistence of systems.

Communism considers itself permanently at war with the rest of the world, even if it must occasionally agree to an armistice. . . . [A]ll forms of action are part of this war, beginning with negotiation. . . .

[T]he aim of negotiation has never been to reach a lasting agreement but to weaken their adversary and prepare it to make further concessions while fostering the illusion that the new concessions will be the last . . ..

-- Jean-Francois Revel, How Democracies Perish, 1983

Hutaree Win Release With Conditions

Ed White for Cleveland.com is reporting here that nine Hutaree militia members jailed for over a month on sedition and other charges get to go home to await trial if they wear "electronic monitoring devices" and comply with other restrictions.

U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts is quoted today as saying, "Discussions about killing local law enforcement officers -- and even discussions about killing members of the judicial branch of government -- do not translate to conspiring to overthrow, or levy war against, the United States government."

The reason? Names and dates apparently were not mentioned by the Hutaree in the evidence accumulated by the FBI, disqualifying their loose talk from the "imminent lawless action" required by a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision dealing with seditious conspiracy, according to the judge.

Sounds like the weapons charges will be front and center in this case. A previous story indicated that the FBI still hadn't completed its examination of the seized arms, despite a month having gone by.

Just how long does it take to load some .223 in the AR 15 platform, pull the trigger, and see if only one round comes out? Or are they just too busy tampering with the evidence?

We Are The I.C.E. Men, Koo Koo Ka Choo

Minutemen counter-protestors carried signs like this in San Francisco on Saturday to protest the presence of illegal immigrants in America, and to remind Americans how both Democrat and Republican administrations have been derelict in their duty to secure the borders.

I.C.E. refers to U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Immigration Militants Destroy Private Property In California

The Telegram is reporting that immigrant rights militants caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage in California late Saturday:

Close to 20 businesses were damaged after what started as a peaceful immigrants' rights march in downtown Santa Cruz turned violent, requiring police to call other agencies for help, authorities said.

If Tea Partiers had done this, you'd never hear the end of it, but since leftists did it you're lucky to hear the beginning of it.

The story is here.

In Arizona, It's About Survival

For Mexicans in America illegally, the urgency for acceptance here has much to do with the rapidly increasing disintegration of their society back home, pride about which makes it difficult for them to own up.

Ralph Peters provides some much needed perspective on the issue in the following, excerpted from his "Border Disorder" which appeared in The New York Post:

South of the border, down Mexico way, a new and savage revolution rages just beyond our inspection lanes. After less than five years of fighting, estimates of the dead have reached 22,000.

The rate of killing accelerates each month. And Washington covers its eyes like a kid at a scary movie. Well, the Mexican narco-insurgency, in which well-armed guerrilla forces confront the authority and presence of the state, is our No. 1 security challenge.

The chaos in northern Mexico has far deeper implications for our country than Islamist terror or even an Iranian nuclear capability (as grim as those threats are).

The rule of law has collapsed from Tijuana on the Pacific's edge to Matamoros and the Gulf of Mexico. Major cities are now "ungoverned spaces," as our diplomats refer tidily to distant trouble spots.

More people now die violently on our southern border than in Somalia, Yemen or even Afghanistan. But Washington doesn't know what to do about Mexico. So Washington does nothing much.

To read more, use the link above.

We Need More Ice At This Fiesta

In a story on yesterday's May Day immigration law protests, AP is very carefully reporting the totals from cities all across the country. Doing the math, I put the reported numbers for the whole country at at least 116,335.

In LA, protestors numbered 50,000, described by AP as "massive."

In NY, they managed only 6,500, where the organizer described the nationwide protests as the awakening of "a sleeping giant."

In Chicago, police estimated the crowds at 8,000.

At The White House, 35 cranks were arrested for civil disobedience.

In Dallas, 20,000 protested, a handful with signs saying Arizona's Governor is a Nazi and Sheriff Joe a Klansman.

In Denver there were 3,000, in Miami hundreds.

In Houston 7,000.

In Atlanta and Milwaukee each, 5,000, while 3,000 were counted in Boston.

Ann Arbor demonstrators numbered 500.

Tucson, AZ, had 5,000, and Phoenix had "several thousand," according to AP, which also said in San Francisco one counter-protestor had a sign saying "We Need More Ice At This Fiesta."

This is all in sharp contrast to the rallies of four years ago. In 2006 "more than 1 million people across the country" were counted, according to AP. In 2010 barely 10% of that.

Yep, that new Arizona law really galvanized dissent yesterday.

Read the story, here.

Congressional Mandates Overheated Housing, Not Wall Street

Mort Zuckerman writes a helpful essay explaining the complex world of mortgage finance and the role of derivatives, and lays much of the blame for the crisis we are going through squarely where it belongs, on the Congress of the United States, instead of on Wall Street:

But we also need to understand how the housing market got as hot as it did. Why did it keep rising, generating more and more derivatives geared to a rising market? It turns out that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration had financed a lot more subprime and Alt-A (alternative documentation) loans than anyone realized, mostly as a result of congressional mandates. Indeed, of their total outstanding mortgage portfolios of $10.6 trillion, roughly half turned out to be of low quality. Had this been known, it would have been clear that the American public's capacity to assume this amount of housing debt was at great risk.

That is at the heart of the now-famous Goldman-Paulson saga. Hedge fund manager John Paulson judged that the housing market was a bubble, so he shorted the securities through Goldman Sachs and an insurer called ACA, which sold the package to a German bank. The buyers judged that it was safe to count on housing prices continuing to rise. They chose which mortgage securities would be bundled by Goldman. And they have paid a heavy price for their judgment.

The American public has hereby had a peek into the bewildering complexities of the world of finance. The natural instinct is for the public to blame the housing decline on those who shorted. But it is the other way around. They should be blaming those who let the market get pumped up, inviting a dramatic and painful correction that took most people by surprise.

The complete story is well worth reading, here.

Q1 2010 GDP Drops to 3.2% from Q4 2009's 5.7%

The following discussion of the initial report of first quarter GDP appeared here at HotAir.com:

Obama: Drop in GDP growth rate means we’re on the right track, or something

APRIL 30, 2010

ED MORRISSEY

Er, come again? The White House crowed endlessly about the 2009Q4 annualized GDP growth rate of 5.7% in January, even after most of it was shown to come from inventory adjustments. Now Barack Obama wants to treat today’s announcement of a 3.2% annualized GDP growth rate as a continuing improvement, when (a) it failed to meet analyst expectations of 3.5%, and (b) it’s a significant drop from the last report. Don’t worry, though, because as Obama explains . . . he has a different measure of progress:

The economy that was losing jobs a year ago is creating jobs today. After the single biggest economic crisis in our lifetimes, we’re heading in the right direction. We’re moving forward. Our economy is stronger — that economic heartbeat is growing stronger. But I measure progress by a different pulse.

Well, obviously. A 3.2% annualized GDP growth rate is better than the -6.0% of a year ago, but it’s still not a figure that will create the kind of economic expansion that will move large numbers of Americans from unemployment rolls to payrolls. Even the White House acknowledges that much in its own projections of unemployment. Despite Obama’s claims above, we still aren’t at a level of net job creation, and the continuing status of initial jobless claims in the mid-400K range means we’re not even getting close to break-even yet.

One last point . . . : Federal spending only rose 1.4% in 2010Q1, while state government spending dropped by 3.8%. The Porkulus money has all but stopped appearing in the economic measures. That makes the 3.2% a bit more solid than earlier measures, but it also means that Obama’s ability to artificially boost numbers before the midterms appears to be dissipating. The next quarters’ numbers will be quite interesting in terms of [their] affect on the national debate. If it’s still stuck at around 3% and unemployment continues to stagnate, Democrats will have trouble trying to use the spin Obama applied today.

Federal Judge Asks Prosecutors Of Hutaree: Where's The Sedition?

The Associated Press has reported that after two days of hearings this week, a federal judge who must decide whether to keep the Hutaree militia locked up hasn't heard anything so far which indicated specific acts of violence were about to be unleashed by the group, nor anything qualifying as seditious conspiracy.

One prosecutor quoted the leader of the militia as saying, "It's now time to strike and take our nation back so that we may be free again from tyranny. Time is up," leading one defense attorney to retort that talk of that sort can routinely be heard on conservative talk radio and that millions of Americans are talking that way these days.

Read the full story here.

51% of Americans Favor New Arizona Immigration Law

The latest Gallup poll shows widespread support for Arizona's new immigration legislation, despite a barrage of negative stories in the media in the wake of its passage:

More than three-quarters of Americans have heard about the state of Arizona's new immigration law, and of these, 51% say they favor it and 39% oppose it.

MediaMatters.org is not happy:

Gallup polled adults nationally about a law that only applies to one state and that, at the time of the survey, had only really been in the national news for a few days, and assumed people who had "heard" of the new law knew what the law was about?

Clearly the left has a lot more work to do to convince people to change their opinion on this subject. The pesky center-right character of the American people just keeps getting in the way.

"Only Controlling The Border Has To Be Settled Right Away"

The ever practical and often wise Peggy Noonan strikes another blow for Edmund Burke in a piece on the illegal immigration problem, "The Big Alienation," for The Wall Street Journal:

In the past four years, I have argued in this space that nothing can or should be done, no new federal law passed, until the border itself is secure. That is the predicate, the commonsense first step. Once existing laws are enforced and the border made peaceful, everyone in the country will be able to breathe easier and consider, without an air of clamor and crisis, what should be done next. What might that be? How about relax, see where we are, and absorb. Pass a small, clear law—say, one granting citizenship to all who serve two years in the armed forces—and then go have a Coke. Not everything has to be settled right away. Only controlling the border has to be settled right away.

To read more, go here.

President Mussolini Anyone?

Investors.com calls the prospect of the Dodd bill becoming law nothing short of fascism:

As it stands, Dodd's bill amounts to a nationalization of our financial sector. It creates permanent bailouts in the U.S. for any company that regulators consider to be in danger of default. That includes any company "substantially engaged in activities ... that are financial in nature."

In other words, virtually any big company, since many industrial giants — GM and GE leap to mind — have their own finance units.

This would give sweeping discretionary control over the economy to the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Treasury — the very regulators who, asleep at the switch in 2005 and 2006, let the U.S. economic locomotive run off the rails.

If the Dodd bill passes intact, regulators can essentially shut down any company at will and force it into receivership. This style of state-directed capitalism has been tried before — in Italy under Mussolini and, later, in Argentina under Peron. It didn't work then, it won't work now.

Read the rest, here.

Why Are Community Bankers Against The Dodd Bill?

"Now ask yourself a simple question: Notwithstanding yesterday's grilling of Goldman execs and Congressional histrionics about "shitty deals," why are the CEO's of two of the largest banks on Wall Street in favor of passing Dodd's bill while community bankers all across the country like Tippens are against it?"

Doug Tippens of Oklahoma will tell you his side of the story here.

The story was also posted here.

U.S. Law Already Requires Aliens To Carry Proof Of Registration At All Times

U.S. Code:

TITLE 8 > CHAPTER 12 > SUBCHAPTER II > Part VII > § 1304

(d) Certificate of alien registration or alien receipt card

Every alien in the United States who has been registered and fingerprinted under the provisions of the Alien Registration Act, 1940, or under the provisions of this chapter shall be issued a certificate of alien registration or an alien registration receipt card in such form and manner and at such time as shall be prescribed under regulations issued by the Attorney General.

(e) Personal possession of registration or receipt card; penalties

Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him pursuant to subsection (d) of this section. Any alien who fails to comply with the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall upon conviction for each offense be fined not to exceed $100 or be imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both.

Arizona Law Is "Sensibly Written And Rigorously Focused"

In "A Carefully Crafted Immigration Law in Arizona," Byron York for The Washington Examiner asks:

Has anyone actually read the law? Contrary to the talk, it is a reasonable, limited, carefully-crafted measure designed to help law enforcement deal with a serious problem in Arizona. Its authors anticipated criticism and went to great lengths to make sure it is constitutional and will hold up in court. It is the criticism of the law that is over the top, not the law itself.

Read the rest of what he has to say, here.

FBI Looks Incompetent in Hutaree Militia Case

The lead FBI agent in charge of the Hutaree militia case, Leslie Larsen, was questioned by militia defense lawyers yesterday and couldn't remember many of the details from what turns out to have been a two year investigation, according to the Toledo Blade.

A judge was surprised that the FBI agent was unprepared to answer despite being notified to be ready last week, saying "she doesn't know anything."

The agent indicated she hadn't yet finished listening to the recordings made by an infiltrator of the group, and couldn't say whether the Hutaree weapons were in fact illegal because they were still (!) being examined. She also seemed unfamiliar with other reports from the investigation, nor would she say definitively that the group's leader had taught anyone how to build a bomb.

Read more about it, here.

Nothing Personal, Just (Left-Wing Thug) Business

Michael Graham is just a little ticked off about the easy way the intallekshuls at Brandeis lump together the Tea Party movement with extremism and neo-Nazism while ignoring the actual violence committed by leftists, such as last weekend by opponents to immigration law enforcement in Arizona, or by two Brandeis women, encouraged by one Bill Ayers, who once participated in a bank stick up in which a policeman was killed.

Read all about it here at the Boston Herald.

Five Million Jobs Lost, Net, In 2009, Over A Million Green Cards Issued!

The following appeared here:

April 26, 2010

WND.COMMENTARY

Whose country is this?

'Obama has done everything but his duty to enforce the law'

By Patrick J. Buchanan

With the support of 70 percent of its citizens, Arizona has ordered sheriffs and police to secure the border and remove illegal aliens, half a million of whom now reside there.

Arizona acted because the U.S. government has abdicated its constitutional duty to protect the states from invasion and refuses to enforce America's immigration laws.

"We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act," said Gov. Jan Brewer. "But decades of inaction and misguided policy have created an unacceptable situation."

We have a crisis in Arizona because we have a failed state in Washington.

What is the response of Barack Obama, who took an oath to see to it that federal laws are faithfully executed?

He is siding with the law-breakers. He is pandering to the ethnic lobbies. He is not berating a Mexican regime that aids and abets this invasion of the country of which he is commander in chief. Instead, he attacks the government of Arizona for trying to fill a gaping hole in law enforcement left by his own dereliction of duty.

He has denounced Arizona as "misguided." He has called on the Justice Department to ensure that Arizona's sheriffs and police do not violate anyone's civil rights. But he has said nothing about the rights of the people of Arizona who must deal with the costs of having hundreds of thousands of lawbreakers in their midst.

How's that for Andrew Jackson-style leadership?

Obama has done everything but his duty to enforce the law.

Undeniably, making it a state as well as a federal crime to be in this country illegally, and requiring police to check the immigration status of anyone they have a "reasonable suspicion" is here illegally, is tough and burdensome. But what choice did Arizona have?

The state has a fiscal crisis caused in part by the burden of providing schooling and social welfare for illegals and their families, who consume far more in services than they pay in taxes and who continue to pour in. Even John McCain is now calling for 3,000 troops on the border.

Police officers and a prominent rancher have been murdered. There have been kidnappings believed to be tied to the Mexican drug cartels. There are nightly high-speed chases through the barrios where innocent people are constantly at risk.

If Arizona does not get control of the border and stop the invasion, U.S. citizens will stop coming to Arizona and will begin to depart, as they are already fleeing California.

What we are talking about here is the Balkanization and breakup of a nation into ethnic enclaves. A country that cannot control its borders isn't really a country anymore, Ronald Reagan reminded us.

The tasks that Arizonans are themselves undertaking are ones that belong by right, the Constitution and federal law to the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Homeland Security.

Arizona has been compelled to assume the feds' role because the feds won't do their job. And for that dereliction of duty the buck stops on the desk of the president of the United States.

Why is Obama paralyzed? Why does he not enforce the law, even if he dislikes it, by punishing the businessmen who hire illegals and by sending the 12 million to 20 million illegals back home? President Eisenhower did it. Why won't he?

Because he is politically correct. Because he owes a big debt to the Hispanic lobby that helped deliver two-thirds of that vote in 2008. Though most citizens of Hispanic descent in Arizona want the border protected and the laws enforced, the Hispanic lobby demands that the law be changed.

Fair enough. But the nation rose up as one to reject the "path-to-citizenship" – i.e., amnesty – that the 2007 plan of George W. Bush, McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama envisioned.

Al Sharpton threatens to go to Phoenix and march in the streets against the new Arizona law. Let him go.

Let us see how many African-Americans, who are today frozen out of the 8 million jobs held by illegal aliens that might otherwise go to them or their children, will march to defend an invasion for which they are themselves paying the heaviest price.

Last year, while Americans were losing a net of 5 million jobs, the U.S. government – Bush and Obama both – issued 1,131,000 green cards to legal immigrants to come and take the jobs that did open up, a flood of immigrants equaled in only four other years in our history.

What are we doing to our own people?

Whose country is this, anyway?

America today has an establishment that, because it does not like the immigration laws, countenances and condones wholesale violation of those laws.

Nevertheless, under those laws, the U.S. government is obligated to deport illegal aliens and punish businesses that knowingly hire them.

This is not an option. It is an obligation.

Can anyone say Barack Obama is meeting that obligation?