We’ll go more in depth on this later, but just now as we were talking here at Buzzquarters we realized that, clearly, a Democrat Civi War is indeed raging. The Ft. Sumter event was ramming through the unconstitutional Healthcare Rationing bill through the Senate on Christmas Eve. Some day, when we write a book on the Democrat Civi War of 2008-2012, aka “How the Golden Age of Hope and Changed Destroyed the Democrat Party Completely”, we believe we’ll see that as the seminal event that let all Hell break loose. It’s what emboldened us to actively campaign for Scott Brown in Massachusetts to make him Senator Hottie McAwesome, and it revealed all Democrats in the Senate to be unworthy of holding office. Every last one of them. Because no “moderates” voted against that abomination, they proved no “moderates” really exist in the current Liberal Socialist Democrat party.
We may have suspected this to be the case before Christmas Eve, but that vote dropped all facade and pretense…which is why we think it will be so remembered as the day Democrats first truly splintered into the balkanized factions we see emerging.
It’s not a question of Good Democrats vs. Bad Democrats, or Moderate/Conservative Dems vs. Leftist Liberals.
No, there are many more factions than that, we now realize. Let’s see if we can start making a list to identify them all in this thread.
Off the top of our heads, we see:
(1) Diehard Leftists committed to Marxism (Obama loyalists).
(2) Rahm Emanuel’s faction of more practical Liberals, who might realize the damage “The One” is doing to their cause, and the way he is making the world see Democrats as out of control lunatics.
(3) Hillary Democrats, like us, who are disgusted by the behavior of the current DNC…and never “fell in line” like we were told after the May 31st Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting in 2008.
(4) Other moderate/conservative Dems who might not have the same Clinton loyalty that we have, but are also so disgusted with the party they want nothing to do with Democrats anymore and are more or less independents now.
There could be many more factions, and factions within factions.
The DNC really has a mess of its own making on its hands, and we don’t believe the MSM is going to be able to save them this time.
Yugoslavia disintegrated with less in-fighting and substantive disagreements in ideology than what Democrats are faced with now.
What factions do you see, what are you looking at in terms of what’s going on, and where do you think things will stand by November of this year?
Bonus question: after the major losses Dems will suffer in November, what do you think happens next for the party?
Can it regroup by 2012 and convince Americans it’s gone back to being moderate and centrist, or is all hope lost for Dems for a generation?
March 8, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Hillbuzz,
What faction does HRC belong to?
In your opinion is Hilliary a “Hillary Democrat”?
Benaiah
March 8, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Hmm don’t forget to list interest groups based on identity. I guess they are tribes – the gay interest tribe, the black interest tribe, the union tribe, the academic lefty interest tribe (or is this a total overlap with committed marxists? not sure). These are definite tribes with their own perspectives, constituencies, interests….
March 8, 2010 at 4:19 pm
This is why I think the result of this is the demise of the Democrat Party. Without the African-American vote going 80%+ for the Democrats, that party loses by an eight to ten point margin nationally. I suspect this is precisely why the Democrat national leadership backed Obama.
What I see happening in the short term is a fracture into an Obama-uber-Alles group and a Save-Our-Positions group.
Neither of which will win. The Republicans are riding a “Down With Washington” tsunami similar to 1994. Except that this time, there will be no Tim McVeigh to sabotage reform, nor a Clinton saying, “the era of Big Government is over” to rescue the Democrats.
In the long term? I think the radicals on the left get reduced to third party status. The Republicans also fracture…into a centrist faction and a libertarian faction. One of them may take the Democrat name over.
It’s happened before. Polarity shifts are not unprecedented…take a look at the positions of the Republican and Democrat parties on national security issues in the 1920s and 1930s.
March 8, 2010 at 5:21 pm
… Except that this time, there will be no Tim McVeigh to sabotage reform …
Dear God, let us pray there’s not.
March 8, 2010 at 7:18 pm
I think all Hillbuzz 4 groups also drill down further by differing social philosophies.
And then there are those who are in each of those 4 groups that drill down into policy differences. If they manage to develop a coalition, it will be more like the old Arab adage: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
I also think if the party loses as suspected both House and Senate, it will be a generation before they get leadership back. The public has lost all trust in them. It takes a long time to build trust after such a betrayal as these bullies and frauds have put us through. And I’m not just talking about health care “reform” and the back door deals – I’m talking about going back to the D primaries where the center and the center-right voters were bludgeoned and then ignored.
Worse for the well being of the country, the “main street press” is trusted less. So even if they start reporting straight facts without their opinions weaved in, none of us will believe them. That’s not good for any of us. You can’t come together where there is no trust.
That doesn’t mean the R party would get a free pass if they come to power. They have divisions too. They divide into social issues, generational issues, policy issues on economics and immigration, the power of the pocketbook and more. But if they have learned their lesson from the Tea Party “revolution”…and they reverse the Obamanomics immediately…oh and cut spending, cut taxes, and let us live our private lives as we wish without their interference, then they will hold DC for a generation. They will have to earn the trust of those that give them the honor of representing us. If they blow it…they will be out on their butts within 2 to 4 years.
March 8, 2010 at 3:55 pm
The party will rebuild after Sarah wins in 2012 and the marxists heads literally explode thus purging the democrats of their influence. lol
March 8, 2010 at 3:57 pm
It seems to me that both parties have lost their way, and the Republicans are regrouping while the Democrats are crumbling.
All of these idiots in office have forgotten why they went to Washington: To represent the PEOPLE.
Their arrogance and self-importance will be their undoing.
And I feel no pity.
None.
March 8, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Me too. NO PITY HERE.
pride cometh before the fall.
March 8, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Kristi … Lord knows I’m no Biblical scholar, but my grandma drummed this into my head at least a million times …
“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall …
March 8, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Yeah.. we have the same general idea.
Watch any arrogant person .. and see what happens to them. Its always a fall.
Of course, when you fall.. its how you get up that matters. IMO.
March 8, 2010 at 5:32 pm
California granny.. you are right!
Proverbs 16:18:
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall
March 8, 2010 at 4:41 pm
I hope the ONE lesson the RNC is learning from this is that they cannot try to run Democrat Lites and think they’ll win. The RNC had thought (with so many indies going to Obama) that what people wanted was Democrat policies. Maybe the Democrat policies of 16 years ago, But certainly not the Obamacrat policies. And every candidate with a D after his/her name is going to have to backpedal like an Olympian to move away from Obama.
March 8, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Someone said on a blog, and I’ll quote, “You can’t beat a Liberal Democrat with a Liberal Republican.” Think Romney, who couldn’t even answer questions about Romneycare vs. Obamacare. Did anyone catch that on Fox News Sunday? C4P was all over it.
March 8, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Yes, it wasn’t pretty to watch. Mostly it was a lot of bobbing and weaving to avoid answering any of Chris Wallace’s questions about how MIttCare ain’t all that it’s cracked up to be. First time I can recall Mitt’s looking as weak … and for want of a better word, weasely. Not a big Romney fan, but he disappointed me anyhow.
March 8, 2010 at 5:59 pm
You need to stop using the Capital for liberal. It means too different things.
Also, would be a good idea to study Republican history and especially the period of Reconstruction.
Republican lite is not as bad as people like scuzzbucket who were Democrats in sheep clothing. Romney for example is nothing like the Scuzzbucket, but Crist is very like the Scuzzbucket.
It is the policies, but it is other things as well.
During the period of Reconstruction the Radical Republicans were in the wrong with their cronyism etc.
Trust me, check out the history and it will open your eyes.
March 8, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Romney reminded me of Ralph Kramden when he got caught by Alice in one of his schemes – Hummina, Hummina…
It was quite an amazing interview. Chris Wallace didn’t let up.
Uncomfortable to watch.
March 8, 2010 at 8:30 pm
I was never a Mitt fan until I met him. Seeing him in a ‘real’ setting vs a talking head on tv got me seeing a different side of him that I found very charming. However… that Chris Wallace thing brought it all back to me. Not liking him so much and I hope he’s not thinking of being the front runner.
March 9, 2010 at 12:41 am
When I think of Mitt Romney being weak and weaselly, I think of this clip. There is no way Sarah would have handled any question in this manner.
March 8, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Republicans are fractured as well. I am frequently disappointed by the nasty sniping.
March 8, 2010 at 8:36 pm
I agree, a lot of work needs to be done to repair the party. And the corruption!!!!! OMG, the criminals have to be run out of congress.
March 8, 2010 at 4:48 pm
http://www.hillaryis44.org/2010/03/05/arrogance-incompetence-corruption-election-2006-and-dimocrat-obamas-culture-of-corruption-election-2010-part-i/
a good read,
March 8, 2010 at 5:01 pm
“All of these idiots in office have forgotten why they went to Washington: To represent the PEOPLE.”….maybe. The other possibility is that their real reason for going to Washington is actually being revealed at this time, and those who didn’t understand it before are now realizing that “these idiots in office” never intended to “represent the PEOPLE”.
March 8, 2010 at 6:04 pm
That too, Emma.
Either way, the parties are imploding, and the truth is coming out.
I predict that we are going to hear from many more whistle blowers.
Massa is scheduled to talk on Glenn Beck tomorrow. For a full HOUR!
March 8, 2010 at 7:02 pm
They went moreover, to uphold and defend the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. GOOD THING THE FOUNDERS INCLUDED THE DOMESTIC part….
March 8, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Oh My…. Eric Massa will be on Glenn Beck tomorrow (tuesday) for the entire hour…. oh my goodness…… make sure to record that!
March 8, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Follow the money folks…there’s more than one ‘son of the devil’s spawn’ in the Dem’s playbook.
A little trip down memory lane to remind us all of how we got from there to here:
http://www.aim.org/special-report/the-hidden-soros-agenda-drugs-money-the-media-and-political-power/
The Hidden Soros Agenda: Drugs, Money, the Media, and Political Power
Special Report | By Cliff Kincaid | October 27, 2004
Soros may be the biggest political fat cat of all time.
How many times have we heard or read stories about Vice President Dick Cheney’s old firm, Halliburton, and its alleged influence over the government? A public company with more than 100,000 employees, Halliburton had revenues of $13 billion in 2001. However, George Soros is a human Halliburton who will be in a position if John Kerry is elected president to pull the strings. He is reportedly worth $7.2 billion. But his role in buying the White House for John Kerry has received generally positive coverage. Soros, we’re told, is a “philanthropist” committed to “democracy.” The Republican Party, by contrast, is supposed to be run by fat cats and Big Business, such as those at Halliburton.
Soros may be the biggest political fat cat of all time. Convicted in France of insider trading, Soros specializes in weakening or collapsing the currencies of entire nations for his own selfish interests. He is known as the man who broke the Bank of England. His power is such that his statements alone can cause currencies to go up or down. Other people suffer so he can get rich. But journalists don’t want to examine the questionable means by which he achieved his wealth because they share his goal of electing Kerry and the Democrats. Curiously, once he made his fortune he became a global socialist, endorsing global taxes on the very means he employed to get rich – international currency speculation and manipulation.
The media consistently ignore the fact that this so-called “philanthropist” has had several brushes with the law as he has laid siege to national economies and currencies. Hard-working U.S. businessmen understand how Soros has made his money. In protesting a Soros appearance hosted by the University of Toledo, Edwin J. Nagle III, president and CEO of the Nagle Companies, highlighted “the immoral and unethical means by which he achieved his wealth.” He added, “I certainly didn’t see included in his bio the stories on how he collapsed whole country’s currencies for his own self interests so that many may suffer.”
Here, Soros signed a consent decree in United States District Court, in a Securities and Exchange Commission case involving stock manipulation, and was fined $75,000 by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for holding positions “in excess of speculative limits.” Stories about Soros rarely, if ever, mention any of his legal problems.
Despite his vision of an “open society,” he operates an unregulated “hedge fund,” open only to the super-rich, and is currently fighting a proposal from the Bush-appointed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate and monitor these offshore entities. House Speaker Dennis Hastert said on national television that no one really knows where the Soros money comes from.
Soros has categorically denied receiving money from drug cartels or any form of criminal activity. The fact remains, however, that at least some of his financial operations have been based offshore, in banking and financial centers that are widely reported to be considered conducive to money-laundering. The Soros fund is based in the Netherlands Antilles, a self-governing federation of five Caribbean islands. A CIA factbook describes the region as “a transshipment point for South American drugs bound for the US and Europe; money-laundering center.”
Soros reportedly purchased a major stake in one of Colombia’s biggest banks, at a time when the Drug Enforcement Administration, in its study, “Colombian Economic Reform: The Impact on Drug Money Laundering within the Colombian Economy,” was documenting how major drug kingpins were taking advantage of the liberalization of the economy to put illicit drug revenue into legitimate businesses. The report stated: “U.S. and Colombian Government authorities have evidence of drug proceeds being deposited in every major bank in Colombia… A Colombian source indicated that many banks and businesses are owned covertly by principal members of the Cali cartel.”
His complex web of financial interests, companies and foundations makes Halliburton look like a Mom & Pop operation.
The charge we read in the press is that Halliburton gets government contracts and makes money from the Iraq war. Far less attention has been paid to the fact that the company has lost 54 employees as a result of that war. Nobody in the press mentions that Soros profits from the Kosovo war, which he supported as a preemptive strike against Yugoslavia, because he runs an investment fund that now does business there. Even though he pays big bucks to advertise his opposition to the Bush policy of democracy-building in Iraq, reporters still describe him as someone with a reputation for building democracy abroad.
However, his position on Iraq may be a diversion from the real reason he wants to get rid of Bush – his longstanding desire to adopt a national “retreat and defeat” approach to the drug problem.
Soros’ long-time goal has been to subvert the national anti-drug policy of the U.S. Government, to move away from the use of national and global law enforcement resources against the drug trade. He calls this “harm reduction,” meaning that criminal activity associated with the use of drugs will supposedly be reduced if the government takes over the drug trade and provides drugs and drug paraphernalia, including needles, to addicts. But law enforcement would still be required to keep drugs out of the hands of children. If this is not the case, then Soros intends to allow substances such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin to be distributed to children.
If Soros is able to capture the White House and implement his drug policy nationally, millions more people could be led to experiment with dangerous psychoactive substances and damage themselves, their families, and society. Even marijuana, depicted by the media as a “soft” drug, has extremely negative consequences. In the new book, “Marijuana and Madness,” one of the editors, Prof. Robin Murray of Britain’s Institute of Psychiatry, cites studies and evidence from around the world, some of it going back 40 years, linking the use of marijuana to mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and psychosis.
In a recent article about his growing financial and political clout, the Washington Post sanitized Soros by claiming that he “funded efforts to reform campaign laws, decriminalize marijuana and change [the] criminal justice system.” All of that is misleading, if not false. His “reform” of campaign laws left a loophole that will enable him to set a record “for the most money donated by an individual in an election cycle,” to quote the Post itself. So where are the investigative stories into Soros and his agenda?
A key part of the Soros agenda — his proposed surrender in the war on drugs — has been carefully concealed from the American people during this campaign. The war on Islamic terrorism is front and center, to be sure, but the war on drugs is still of major concern to millions of Americans, especially parents fearful of the influence of Hollywood and the drug culture.
A Soros role in formulating national drug policy is worthy of special press attention because his pro-drug legalization campaign has been considered at odds with the vast majority of Republicans and Democrats who share the view that legalization would make the drug problem far worse.
In the current campaign, however, a major transformation has taken place. Soros is said to have “privatized” or replaced the Democratic Party by subsidizing many different liberal-left organizations that comprise its political base and creating new ones, the “527″ organizations.
Among the candidates who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, Soros financially supported John Kerry, Wesley Clark, Senator Bob Graham, and Howard Dean. He has been praised by Senator Hillary Clinton and contributed to her Senate campaign and political action committee. He has also contributed to the political campaigns of Democratic Senators Tom Daschle, Carl Levin, John Corzine, Mary Landrieu, Debbie Stabenow, Charles Schumer, Joseph Biden, Patrick Leahy, Paul Sarbanes, Thomas Harkin, and Barbara Boxer. In 2002, Soros funded Al Gore for president and contributed $153,000 in “soft money” to the Democratic National Committee. Soros, who is also very close to Bill Clinton, was described by Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott as a “national treasure.”
It is significant that Soros and two of his sons have contributed $2000 each to Brad Carson, the Democratic Senate candidate in Oklahoma. His Republican opponent, Dr. Tom Coburn, was a member of the U.S. House for six years, where he developed a reputation as a leading opponent of efforts to legalize marijuana and fund needle exchange programs that facilitate illicit drug use. Coburn exposed Soros-style “harm reduction” as a backdoor approach to legalization of illicit drugs. Coburn was also a strong supporter of drug testing and even fought to require drug testing of members of Congress. Coburn and his staff voluntarily underwent drug testing. If elected to the Senate, say his supporters, Coburn would be the chamber’s leading voice for protecting children from the dangers of drug abuse and a scientific voice of reason against the Soros-supported movement that seeks to legalize drugs. It’s no wonder that Soros and his sons have targeted Coburn for defeat.
Soros has also contributed to Barack Obama, running for the Senate as a Democrat from Illinois. CNSNews.com reports that, “Not only did Soros donate to Obama’s campaign, but four other family members – Jennifer, sons Jonathan and Robert and wife Susan – did as well. Because of a special provision campaign finance laws, the Soroses were able to give a collective $60,000 to Obama during his primary challenge.”
Soros was described by the New Yorker as close to Harold Ickes, a former Clinton deputy chief of staff who runs the Media Fund, one of many Soros-supported “527″ groups. Soros described him as a “real pro.”
Away from the scrutiny or even the notice of the establishment press, Soros has emerged as a counter-culture hero.
The drug culture magazine, Heads, calls him “Daddy Weedbucks,” ran an excerpt from his book, Soros on Soros, and declared that “he drops the bucks exactly where they’re needed.” The September-October issue of the drug culture magazine High Times recognizes the stakes, noting that there are “ten reasons to get rid of Bush” and that one is that there will be “No legalization of pot” under Bush. The implication of the article was that the situation would change under Kerry.
None of this is being reported, however, by the major media.
His partner, Peter Lewis, whitewashed by the Post as “one of the country’s 10 most generous philanthropists,” was actually arrested in New Zealand for “importing” drugs, including hashish and marijuana.
The Human Halliburton
The media call him a billionaire “philanthropist” who “promotes democracy” and “democratic institutions” abroad. He has been invited to address the National Press Club on October 28, 2004, just before the election. But admitted marijuana user George Soros, who says he tried marijuana “and enjoyed it,” doesn’t just “give” money away. He spends money for a purpose because he wants to remake America and the world. He is depicted in a recent lengthy New Yorker article by Jane Mayer as well-intentioned, not that concerned about money, the victim of scurrilous attacks, and someone who simply wants his “ideas” to “be heard.” This is typical of the fawning coverage of Soros. Mayer made a brief reference to his collaborator, Peter B. Lewis, and his funding of “efforts to decriminalize marijuana,” but she failed to explore how Soros is himself committed to legalizing dangerous drugs. Mayer did disclose that a meeting was held in August, after the Democratic Party convention, of what critics call a “billionaire conspiracy” to defeat Bush. Soros and Lewis were among the participants in the meeting, which was supposed to be kept private.
Soros’ strong opposition to President Bush’s effort to create democratic institutions in Iraq contradicts his alleged support for democracy. But the media don’t point this out because they oppose Bush’s Iraq policy. Mayer, who interviewed the billionaire at length, suggests that Soros may be “looking for influence [in a Kerry Administration] to get out of Iraq” but that to pursue such an objective in exchange for his financial support to the candidate might be deemed “not appropriate” by some observers.
It would be unwise for the public to dismiss the idea that he would not demand implementation of his other “ideas,” including drug legalization.
Sometimes described as an atheist or agnostic, Soros has announced a vision of a secular “open society.” However, his agenda of drug legalization has remained largely hidden from public view during the current campaign.
While Soros may not want to openly talk about what he would expect out of a Kerry Administration, his allies have obviously been giving it much thought.
At the 2004 conference of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Ethan Nadelmann of the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance was asked about his association with Soros and the billionaire’s attempt to put John Kerry in the White House. The questioner asked, “Are we going to get some Supreme Court justices out this?” Nadelmann modestly answered, “We will see,” and cautioned that it may be difficult to deliver “all the goods.”
This is critical because the U.S. Supreme Court is already considering the matter of the several U.S. states that have laws on the books permitting some form of “medical marijuana” use, a violation of federal law, and could return to the subject in the future. The Court is expected to rule by June 2005 on a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, challenged by the Bush administration, that bars federal agents from interfering with the growing and use of marijuana by two women in California.
Hollywood has already been captured by the illegal drug lobby.
At the 2004 NORML conference, Allen St. Pierre of the NORML Foundation described how various U.S. television programs “have previewed marijuana in a way ultimately positive.” He named them as ER, Chicago Hope, the Practice, Sybil, Murphy Brown, Sports Night, Becker, West Wing, Roseanne, Sex in the City, Six Feet Under, Whoopi, Montel, That 70s Show, and the Larry David Show. “These shows are seen by tens of millions of people,” he said. “So that’s what it’s so crucial that we’re able to capture—and to demonstrate the change in—culture.”
The challenge for the drug culture is now to capture the U.S. Government. Soros is their front man.
Bloomberg.com quoted Strobe Talbott, U.S. deputy secretary of state from 1994 to 2001, as saying, “Whenever George Soros called and asked to meet, I would move heaven and earth to do so. I treated him like the foreign minister of another country because of all that he had done.” Even under the Bush Administration, Soros has been considered an important and influential figure. He gave a September 16, 2003, speech at the State Department on “America in the Global Community: Building Long-Term Security.”
So think about the clout he would have if he almost single-handedly buys the White House for John Kerry and plays a role in the election of several new Senators.
Rather than investigate the source of the Soros money, Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson has praised Soros for engineering the “privatization” of the Democratic Party through funding of the “527″ political groups and bypassing what he calls an incompetent Democratic Party apparatus. At the far-left “Take Back America” forum in June, Soros was photographed greeting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who introduced him to the group. She told the crowd that, “we need people like George Soros, who is fearless and willing to step up when it counts.” He stepped up with his money.
However, Meyerson and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman have attacked House Speaker Dennis Hastert for raising questions about where Soros gets his money.
A professed believer in democracy, Soros has used the “527″ loophole in a campaign finance law that he promoted to restrict the political activities of “special interests.” He has set a record “for the most money donated by an individual in an election cycle.” Those “special interests” turned out to be other people — not him. He has since poured millions of dollars into anti-Bush groups and voter registration drives, some marked by alleged fraud, for the Democratic Party.
His commitment to democracy is never questioned. Typical of the pro-Soros media coverage was a USA Today story on June 1 that gave Soros credit for freeing millions of people from communism and “supporting democracy.” The story ignored his insider trading conviction. While Soros provided some funding to anti-communist groups during the Cold War, his career has been designed to make money and extend his influence over nations and people. Communism was a threat because it was not hospitable to his investments.
An excellent example of how he operates is Kosovo. As indicated earlier, it is relevant to note that, after the Soros-supported war on Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia, a Soros fund announced in 2000 that it was investing $150 million — with loan guarantees from the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation — in the Balkans. It was called the “Southeast Europe Equity Fund.” By 2002, the OPIC-supported size of the investment had risen to $200 million and OPIC announced that Soros Investment Capital, Ltd. Fund Yugoslavia had acquired a controlling stake in Eksimbanka, a private commercial bank in Serbia, and had financed the start-up of Serbia Broadband Networks, the leading cable television and broadband services company in Serbia.
What’s more, his “open society” doesn’t extend to himself. He unregulated “hedge funds,” open only to the super rich, are beyond public scrutiny or the interest of the press. In a curious chapter of his career, he reportedly invested in an energy company run by George W. Bush, in an unsuccessful attempt to buy influence with the Bush family.
As noted, in another curious development, the global capitalist has become a global socialist advocating a global tax, known as the Tobin Tax, on the means by which he exploited the global capitalist system and became rich – international currency speculation and manipulation. Soros has declared that the Tobin Tax is a “valid suggestion” for raising international revenue and that opposition to implementing the tax can be overcome. What has not been reported is that Thomas Palley, the director of the Globalization Reform Project at Soros’ Open Society Institute, was a featured speaker at a January 2003 event in Washington, D.C. to discuss how to implement the tax.
“He made his money the old-fashioned way, on Wall Street,” wrote Post columnist Harold Meyerson. In fact, he made his money through investment techniques that are not available to ordinary investors, and his financial interventions can affect nations and their economies.
Soros claims that the “527″ organizations he funds “file detailed and frequent reports with government regulators.” On the January 9 NOW With Bill Moyers program on PBS, Charles Lewis of the Soros-funded Center for Public Integrity argued that while Soros was funding 527 groups, Soros was disclosing these contributions and that the money could be tracked.
Again, that begs the question of where he gets his money.
His use of that loophole — in a law that he promoted to restrict the influence of outside “special interests” on political campaigns — is suspicious and curious on its face. Equally curious, Soros claims that the Bush Administration’s reaction to 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq caused him to spend millions of dollars through these “527″ organizations to defeat Bush. However, Soros favored the Clinton Administration’s preemptive attack on Yugoslavia, in the absence of any threat to the U.S. and without U.S. Congressional authorization.
While Soros runs around the country talking about defeating Bush, mostly because of his Iraq policy, he is using his money to target other candidates who have prosecuted the war on drugs.
The pro-Soros national media have refused to examine the implications of a ruling by New York State Supreme Court Justice Bernard Malone. He ruled that it was improper for the Soros-backed Working Families Party to get involvement in a Democratic primary for District Attorney and he referred the case to local prosecutors and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for a possible criminal investigation. Thanks to the money provided by Soros, David Soares defeated incumbent District Attorney Paul Clyne in the Democratic primary. At the time of Clyne’s defeat, Ethan Nadelmann of the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance Network said he was proud that his group had “contributed to this race” and that “what happened in Albany” has “national resonance.” That suggested to some that Soros, if he is successful in putting John Kerry in the White House, would change the nation’s anti-drug policy.
The Criminals Lobby
Soros, who lives in New York, has also contributed $150,000 to a California ballot measure, proposition 66, to overturn the three-strikes law, which mandates prison terms of 25-years-to-life for defendants convicted of a third felony. The ballot measure is opposed by the state’s district attorneys and law enforcement agencies.
In other unsavory connections, a Soros grant was given to Linda Evans, who was pardoned by Bill Clinton for her involvement in the Weather Underground terrorist group. The Weather Underground was involved in the 1981 Brinks robbery, in which three murders were committed, and a series of bombings, including the bombing of the U.S. Capitol in November 1983.
The Baltimore, Maryland, branch of the OSI on May 12 hosted Bernardine Dohrn, another former member of the Weather Underground who once expressed solidarity with mass murderer Charles Manson, at a forum on criminal justice issues. Speaking to a Weather Underground “war council” in Michigan in 1969, Dohrn gave a three-fingered “fork salute” to Manson. As noted by Ami Naramor of The Claremont Institute, “Calling Manson’s victims the ‘Tate Eight,’ Dohrn gloated over the fact that actress Sharon Tate, who was pregnant at the time, had been stabbed with a fork in her womb. ‘Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!’” Dohrn, now an associate professor and director at Northwestern University’s Children and Justice Center, was a member of the advisory committee of the “children’s rights watch” project of Human Rights Watch, funded by Soros.
Not coincidentally, the drug culture has embraced the Weather Underground. High Times magazine has called David Gilbert, a Weather Underground member now in prison, an “anti-imperialist political prisoner” and has hailed his book, No Surrender. High Times says Gilbert works behind bars for “prisoners’ rights” – a favorite cause of Soros.
The latest development is creation of “Cannabis Consumers,” a bizarre organization of out-of-the-closet illegal pot smokers, formed to celebrate and glorify the drug. Director Mikki Norris, who says her group received a grant from the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance, says, “we honor George Soros.”
The Soros-supported Drug Policy Alliance supports “marijuana clubs” currently dispensing the drug, supposedly on “medical” grounds. The federal government has tried to close down these clubs—a policy that could change if Soros gains access to and influence over the White House. Several states have passed “medical marijuana” initiatives, funded by Soros, attempting to provide the drug under the cover of treating illnesses. But the American people have been kept in the dark about whether the Soros campaign to weaken drug laws would be embraced and implemented on a national basis by a Kerry Administration.
One of the few reporters to question the Soros agenda is John Berlau of Insight magazine, who asked whether Soros would benefit financially from his huge expenditures on political activity. Michael Vachon, the spokesman for Soros Fund Management in New York City, said, “I have no faith in the ability or desire of Insight magazine to portray George Soros’ activities in an unbiased manner.” Pressed, he said, “There’s no relationship between the policy prescriptions George Soros recommends and his own financial holdings. He doesn’t make policy recommendations to increase his own personal wealth. That’s not what motivates him.”
There can be no doubt, however, that if the Soros plan for drug legalization goes forward, there would have to be an official infrastructure in place to finance drug production and distribution and handle the enormous profits that will be made from legalization. Legalization will not eliminate drug profits, it will only transfer some of them to government and “legitimate” industries. Soros could be poised to invest in those industries and companies.
He is laying the groundwork for the creation of a system under which government and corporations would legalize, dispense and advertise hard drugs, much like tobacco or alcohol, and supply addicts with needles and drug paraphernalia. In effect, Soros appears to be financing drug legalization for the purpose of creating a new market for federal payments to underwrite drug purchases for addicts. Soros appears to favor an indoor version of “Needle Park,” where addicts come to government offices to inject or smoke their drugs at taxpayer expense.
His position is also reflected in his funding of the ACLU, which itself favors the legalization of all drugs—even heroin and crack cocaine—and opposes virtually all measures taken to curtail drug use. In another example of its extremist approach, the group has rejected funds from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and participation in the Combined Federal Campaign, because acceptance of the money would require adopting measures to make sure it does not employ terrorists or support terrorist activity.
Soros hired Aryeh Neier as president of his Open Society Institute (OSI) in 1993. Neier worked for the ACLU for 15 years, including eight as national director.
Typically, Soros and his cronies present the current “war on drugs” as draconian, a huge waste of money and a threat to civil liberties. Legalization is then presented, usually couched in terms of reducing the harm associated with illegal use and procurement of drugs. The audience is never presented with a third option—eradication of drug crops at home and abroad, an intensified military/intelligence effort against drug lords abroad, tougher sentences for users and dealers, and more drug testing.
In 1995, Soros made a major contribution to the Council on Foreign Relations, which two years later, under the leadership of Mathea Falco, released a comprehensive report on U.S. international drug control strategy, entitled, Rethinking International Drug Control. However, A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times, who participated in the task force that drafted the report, declined to endorse it, saying that it “is so negative in substance and tone about United States efforts to stem drug use, production and distribution that it amounts to an invitation to drop those efforts…”
Soros clearly has his sights set on global policy on drugs. Soros was a signer of a 1998 letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urging a radical revamping of global anti-drug policies. Another signer was Morton H. Halperin, a former Department of Defense and National Security Council Official.
In a typical laudatory article about Soros, USA Today author Rick Hampson made a brief reference to his belief in “liberalized drug laws.” Nothing was said, however, about how Soros has managed to liberalize or weaken those laws across the country, and how he has his sights set on national anti-drug policy. The National District Attorneys Association says that since 1996 “incremental changes in state drug laws have continued at an alarming rate across our nation” and they are designed to “ultimately legalize drugs.” Soros was identified in this report as one of the wealthy individuals behind this “very well financed” drug legalization movement that is “highly adept at manipulating the media.”
In an October 18 Newsweek story, “Can a Billionaire Beat Bush?” writer Marcus Mabry said that Soros will “be there” even if Bush wins, ready to “build a new left…” Soros and other ” wealthy progressives,” he says, “will set about assembling the infrastructure,” including think tanks, foundations, and civic groups, of this “new left.”
But Soros has already done this. The late left-wing writer, Walt Contreras Sheasby, noted that the Soros influence “is one of those hushed secrets inside the left…” and that he has subsidized “many of the activist groups, luminaries and publications of the American left…”
Mabry completely ignored his pro-drug legalization agenda and erroneously claimed that his involvement in this year’s presidential campaign is “his first significant involvement in American electoral politics.” Mabry ignored Soros’s funding of at least 19 initiatives to weaken drug laws.
Journalists carefully conceal their own conflicts of interest. On the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) NOW With Bill Moyers program on January 9 of this year, Moyers interviewed Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity about the big money supporting the presidential candidates. But little time and attention was paid to how Soros was trying to buy the White House and pouring millions of dollars into groups such as MoveOn.org to bring this about. Moyers, former press secretary to President Lyndon Johnson, failed to tell his viewers that he is on the board of Soros’ Open Society Institute and that it has funneled $1.7 million into Lewis and his Center for Public Integrity. Moyers had conducted and aired an interview with Soros on September 12, 2003, where he declared, “The Republican Party has been captured by a bunch of extremists…” Soros was presented as an opponent of unchecked capitalism and a supporter of democracy and nation-building abroad.
The power of the Soros-supported media network was demonstrated in mid-October when a controversy emerged over Sinclair Broadcasting airing parts of Stolen Honor, a film raising questions about the detrimental impact of John Kerry’s 1971 anti-war testimony on U.S. Vietnam POWs being held by the communists. Kerry had branded U.S. soldiers as war criminals, and POWs interviewed in Stolen Honor said this resulted in more torture to them. The Democratic Party, the Kerry campaign, and various groups denounced Sinclair for planning to air Stolen Honor. MediaChannel.org, Common Cause, the Alliance for Better Campaigns, Media Access Project, Media for Democracy, and the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ held an anti-Sinclair news conference. They denounced Sinclair for allegedly abusing the public airwaves by planning to air “propaganda.” All of these organizations — except for the possible exception of the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ — are funded by Soros.
Media Matters, a left-wing media watchdog group that was also pressuring Sinclair to abandon plans to air the testimony of the former POWs, was “developed” with help from the Center for American Progress, funded by Soros.
The attack on Sinclair had the effect of diverting attention away from the extensive and controversial media connections of Soros, his foundations, and the organizations they subsidize, and legitimate questions about the Soros-supported candidate John Kerry. These groups – and the many prominent journalists who serve on their boards – make Sinclair look penny ante.
Pro-Soros media coverage dates back many years and continues to the present day, as detailed in this report. In 1996, Dan Rather’s CBS Evening News highlighted him as a philanthropist and humanitarian, someone who had made a fortune but was now making a difference. The story by correspondent Anthony Mason ignored his commitment to legalization of drugs.
That same year, Judith Miller of the New York Times wrote that he was “bringing his philanthropy home.” While she made a brief reference to his drug legalization agenda, the headline over the piece said he was committed to “social justice.” His close adviser, Aryeh Neier, a longtime ACLU official, was described merely as a “human rights advocate.”
On the far left, The Nation magazine and its Nation Institute have been supported by OSI. The magazine published a generally flattering piece about the Soros-funded Center for American Progress.
In 1994 Soros received the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award at an International Press Freedom Awards dinner, sponsored by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Five years earlier, OSI gave 4 grants, totaling $220,000, to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Benjamin was senior executive producer at CBS News and served briefly as chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists before his death in 1988.
The Soros media connections include:
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An investor in the Times Mirror Company, Soros funded the Project on Media Ownership, headed by Professor Mark Crispin Miller at New York University. Whose purpose was expose “media concentration.” A total of $300,000 over several years came from George Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI). In 1999, a survey commissioned by the Project on Media Ownership and the Benton Foundation and paid for by OSI found that seventy-nine percent of adults would favor a law requiring commercial broadcasters to pay 5 percent of their revenues into a fund for public broadcasting.
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Eric Alterman of The Nation has hailed Soros for spending millions on “education campaigns with America Coming Together, voter mobilization drives with MoveOn.org and research activities with the Center for American Progress (CAP)–where I am a senior fellow…” Alterman says his own magazine, The Nation, is viewed as out of the mainstream in part because of “the continued appearance in its pages of a long-time Stalinist communist, Alexander Cockburn, whose unabashed hatred for both America and Israel … tarnish the reputation of its otherwise serious contributors.” Alterman’s mentor, I.F. Stone, was a paid agent of the KGB and a Stalinist.
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In the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Orville Schell said that Soros had written a “succinct and well-reasoned book,” The Bubble of American Supremacy, which ought “to provide a welcome template for how the candidates might begin to think their way through to a more coherent view of America’s place in the world.” Soros had spoken on March 3 at the Goldman Forum on the Press and Foreign Affairs, sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. The event was a conversation between Soros and Journalism Dean Orville Schell.
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OSI gave $60,000 to the Independent Media Institute , whose executive director, Don Hazen, is a former publisher of Mother Jones. Hazen has called Soros a “progressive philanthropist.” A story carried by the Independent Media Institute on its AlterNet project says Soros “believes in democracy, positive international relations and effective strategies to reduce poverty, among other things.”
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OSI gave a $75,000 grant to the Center for Investigative Reporting. The group’s board of advisers includes prominent journalists.
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OSI gave $246,528 to the Center for Public Integrity, headed by former CBS News producer Charles Lewis, “to support the continuing expansion of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.” A total of $1 million went for “the Global Access Project.” In total, it is estimated that the group has received $1.7 from Soros.
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OSI gave $200,000 to the Fund for Investigative Journalism. This group, too, features prominent journalists on its board.
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OSI’s “Network Media Program” gave $22,157 to Investigative Reporters & Editors.
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Soros Foundations have provided $160,000 to MediaChannel.org, a so-called “media issues supersite, featuring criticism, breaking news, and investigative reporting from hundreds of organizations worldwide.” The executive editor is Danny Schecter, a former news program producer and investigative reporter at CNN and ABC. It was created by Globalvision News Network, whose board includes “Senior executives from the world’s leading media firms.”
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OSI has contributed $70,000 toward the far-left Independent Media Center, or Indymedia, known as an “independent newsgathering collective,” whose servers were seized by a federal law enforcement agency on October 7. The action was apparently related to an investigation into international terrorism, kidnapping or money laundering.
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OSI provided $600,000 to the Media Access Project, a so-called telecommunications public interest law firm critical of conservative influence in the major media.
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OSI provide $30,000 to the Media Awareness Project, a “worldwide network dedicated to drug policy reform” and promoting “balanced media coverage” of the drug issue.
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OSI provided $200,000 to the Association for Progressive Communications, “an international network…working for peace, human rights, development and protection of the environment…”
Considering all of the money that Soros or his organizations have provided to news organizations, it should be no surprise to learn that journalists love him. His web site advises visitors to “read about George Soros from The New York Times, USA Today, Time Magazine, et al.,” all of which are reprinted on the site and highly favorable. His new web site features several complimentary statements about Soros from articles in the press and media figures.
Either the media fear his wealth and power, they favor his positions on the issues, or they want access to his money. The people have a right to know.
March 8, 2010 at 4:10 pm
I have a serious request for The Boyz. And I mean them no disrespect. Nor do I mean their heroine, Secretary Hillary Clinton, any disrespect. It is information I seek. I do not intend to disparage.
Request: Please tell me the difference between what Mrs. Clinton tried to do back in the early 1990s with health care and what Dr. Utopia is trying to do. I don’t need a long dissertation. I would just like to see what you have to say.
March 8, 2010 at 4:12 pm
PS: I love reading what you guys write. But I know you have limited time and energy. Who doesn’t?! That’s why I say I need no long dissertation. However, if you have to go on about it, all the better for us readers who enjoy you so much.
March 8, 2010 at 7:03 pm
there’s a search function here. We’ve been writing since 2008. Healthcare reform was a major part of Clinton’s presidential campaign. You can easily find the answer to this question in archives.
HRC’s plan was nothing like this. President HRC would not have handled things this way, and would not have allowed Leftist loons to write this legislation. She learned from her 1993 mistakes and spent the last 15 years working on a good plan.
The search function and archives are your friend.
March 8, 2010 at 4:31 pm
well, to be honest, I am now realising Hillary’s 1990 healthcare plan was not good.
I have been reading on it, I didn’t realise she caused a lot of vaccine companies to flee overseas.
I respect Hillary, I voted for her, donated to her, campaigned 4 her. But I did not agree with her 1990′s plan now that I look back at it.
I was in middle school/high school back then, and being from a democrat family, I had grown up always thinking, democrats good, repub/conservatives bad.
After I saw Hillary being treated like scum, the way dems and MSM normally treat repubs/conservatives, my eyes were open, the democrat blinders were off. And so I started thinking critically, wanted to know facts, b/c after the 2008 dem promaries and dealing with Obots while campaigning for Hillary, they would come up with the most insane arguments, and I needed facts to promote Hillary.
That independent mentality stuck after 2008.
If Hillary had voted for that PO$ bill on December 24th at 1AM, I would have campaigned against her.
But, repubs have to admit, that Hillary is very strong on national defense. She will always put America first for the safety of its citizens.
And also, we know Hillary’s backgrd, she grew up in America, she not only believes in America, she would not be going ard the world apologizing for this great country.
And she is a strong believer in the greatness of AMerica.
(Hillary is a moderate dem, she is not a looney radical lefty like the Marixst Messaih)
So, her 1990′s plan, not good, if Hillary had voted for the piece of crap bill on december 24th at 1AM, she would lost my respect and my support.
(looks like perhaps Hillary was indeed very smart to see this trainwreck that was headed and got out of the Senate)
This 2009 RationCare bill is indefensible, it will only hurt America and Americans.
Hope this sort of answers your question (just my humble opinion as a Hillary dem-now-an-independent)
March 8, 2010 at 5:17 pm
I agree.. Hillary is stronger in defense than most other dems in public office. I also say that her healthcare bill, although different than this one, was the same kind of idea.
Let’s fast forward from the 90′s to the primaries. If I remember right (and my memory isn’t always the best) I seem to recall that when they debated the big difference between Hillary’s idea of healthcare today and Obama’s was that one would cover everybody and the other covered ALMOST everybody, but NOT everybody. That was the one thing that was brought out as the “defining difference” between their 2 plans when they were just talk during the primaries.
Please don’t take me wrong guys… but I have this “gut feeling” that had Hillary stayed in the senate she would’ve gone along with the others and voted yes on this bill. Why do I feel that way? Because there were too many similarities to what she had wanted herself. yes, some differences- but too many similarities to NOT vote for it. Sorry. I still like Hillary and admire her.. but I’m a little afraid of what she would have done for a healthcare bill had she not been torpedoed by the dem leadership. However, she’s smarter than Obama by a HUGE long-shot and I’m sure she would’ve backed off long before it got this toxic.
March 8, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Hillary’s health care bill was different bit still too much government control. And they couldn’t pay for it. In her defense, I just can not imagine Hillary allowing a Christmas Eve vote on this bill. I have a gut feeling she would have talked them down or held it up or something to delay the failure of this bill until the public approved of it. There would have been allies in the Republican party that she could work with as she did when she was in the senate. I think she would have found a way to convince Obama to pass the items both parties agreed on and then worked to compromise on the rest or delay the passage of the rest until the public approved and could pay for it. She is just too politically astute now not to have seen what a terrible mistake that was.
March 8, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Maybe not (on the possible Sen. Hillary “yes” vote). After all, isn’t the context different? The deficit is exploding. Back in the 90s, during the era of “Hillarycare,” that was not the case. Other than that, I think the positive points of the plans are similar. (Dr. U stole it from her as he sole every one of his “ideas.” Remember his oft repeated opening to every debate, after she answered first — “I agree with what she said….”).
But right now, with the current financial situation, I don’t see her voting “yes.”
March 8, 2010 at 5:26 pm
You have hit the crux of the matter ssmith. Hillary is American. Obozo is not an American at heart. He did not have the advantage of being brought up by people who believed/believe in America. His formative years were spent in Indonesia being raised by a Muslim stepfather and a communist-learning mother & grandparents. He does not know what it is like to have pride and respect for this country.
He just wants everyone to be like him…hate everything that we as Americans stand for, blame we Americans for every wrong that he may feel has happened to him, and as a result he will bring us (transform) around to what he believes is the RIGHT way to think and act — his way.
March 8, 2010 at 6:04 pm
make that a communist stepfather and a communist mother.
March 8, 2010 at 11:23 pm
If you sell a product, and the government requires every American to buy it — even subsidizes the cost for people who can’t afford it — what’s not to love? The insurance companies would get 22 to 30 million new paying customers, 18 million of whose premiums would be subsidized. Keep in mind that a large portion of those who now would be mandated to enroll in coverage are 18-34 years old. Statistically, they will be paying for a plan that they will not use. Younger aged people historicially use almost a negligable amount of healthcare benefits.
So the industry is satisfied with being handed 22 to 30 million new paying customers, most of which who won’t get sick. In fact, the insurance industry is just fulfilling its duty to its stockholders. They want a reform program in which absolutely everyone must buy their costly product, with hefty subsidies for everyone who can’t afford the premiums (excluding those in Medicaid and Medicare). For example, according to the CBO, using current premium estimates, the current bill would require a middle-income family of four with an annual income of $78,000 to pay $15,100 out of pocket (premiums, deductibles, and co-payments), or 19% of its income. (Sometimes it seems legislators have difficulty putting themselves in the shoes of a family trying to house, feed, clothe, and educate its members on $78,000, minus $15,000 for health care.)
Think about it in terms of other actuarial equivellancies. Statistically automobile drivers between 45 and 60 years old, are the most profitable group to insure. If the government mandates that they must pay the same premium cost as those 16 to 24 year old car wreckers, then wahoo.. every insurance company will make more profits. The competition for the more profitable insurance participants is removed. Everyone will pay the same premium. This is a windfall for insurance companies, they would get to charge the safe drivers the same as the bad ones.
It is ironic how President Obama demonizes the health insurance industry, yet prior to his attempt at a government takeover of such an industry, he held a summit with the insurance companies to insure that they would not do the same thing to him that they did to Clinton. The insurance companies, looking out for their stockholders and profits, got into bed with the devil. Obama promised that there would not be a public option and that is all they needed to step aside.
March 9, 2010 at 12:47 am
Obama demonizes the insurance companies as a scapegoat to stir up their base…those evil profiteering captialists. They don’t fight back in the press because, as you’ve outlined, Obamacare is a huge windfall for them.
I really think some people believe Obamacare (and especially the public option, or single payer were either of those able to pass) means free health care.
Any critical thinking about this whole mess will lead to the loss of freedom, rationing, and higher costs not to mention the fraud behind the sales pitch (ie, 10 years of taxes to pay for 6 years of health care). But there are a lot of people who just want to believe in Mr. Hopenchange.
March 8, 2010 at 6:01 pm
the biggest difference is that when informed that it was unconstitutional the Clintons pulled out and did not ram it down the throats of the people.
March 8, 2010 at 6:16 pm
I don’t remember that… they were told it was unconstitutional? Then WHY doesn’t anybody remind Obama that it had been told the Clintons? And… why did Hillary, during the primaries, talk of another hcb? If they stopped the first one because it was unconstitutional, why would this one (or one that Hillary would have tried had she gotten in) been any less? I guess I’m getting more and more befuddled now… I don’t recall this during the Clinton years in the W.H.
March 8, 2010 at 7:03 pm
I learned that Bill clinton once the bill was deemed unpopular by the american public was thinking of ramming it thru reconcialtion.
BUT… Robert Byrd, a democrat said NO! its not consitutitional to ram it this way.
the focus then went on jobs, the hillarycare was dropped.
March 9, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Amongst the reading that I have done, I saw that Hillary was given legal advice that the bill she proposed was unconstitutional. This was on top of being unpopular. They pulled out.
If the advice was private from legal people associated with the WH at the time it would not have made the media….
March 9, 2010 at 1:43 pm
We are talking the Clintons here, not Dr. Utopia.
March 9, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Perhaps Hillary was talking about the plan because she herself did not want to give it up.
It would still be unconstitutional.
March 8, 2010 at 11:10 pm
qr4j, the primary difference can be best represented in reviewing the opposition to both plans. In Hillary’s initial 1990′s plan the Health Insurance Companies orchastrated a massive negative ad campaign against it. The commercials and print ads were everywhere. Essentially because her plan included a government option to traditional Health Insurance. Her plan, as advertised at the time, was to create a system that would allow gov’t plans and hence gov’t price controls.
What Rahm talked Obama into with this plan was for mandated insurance coverage, but no government plan. The “f**kin retard” comment was specifically about this part of the agenda. Liberals were enraged that the WH bascially made a deal with the insurance companies to drop the government option. Rahm said they were retards for not understanding the value of NOT having the insurance companies spend money on negative ad campaign. After these basic agreements the insurance companies just stepped aside. Why not? Pretty good deal for them to have 22 to 30 million people forced into health insurance, “many” of them with subsidized premiums.
Did you ever wonder why health insurance companies seem to be pretty quiet about this round of Healthcare Reform? Yet, they were explosive about Hillary’s.
Obama learned from Hillary’s experience that he needed to get the insurance companies on his side early, to stop the possibility of them spending HUGE $$$ in the media to destroy it.
March 8, 2010 at 4:11 pm
As fractured and messed up things are in the country now, the Democrats have actually done the country a huge favor. We have been so complacent for far too long and it has taken the corruption of the Democrats and the laissez-faire attitude of the Republicans to wake up us. We let our Congress essentially do whatever it has wanted to for decades–good gracious, the more I think about it–all of the corruption and misdealing(financial and otherwise)-it just makes your head swirl. I guess what we have all learned is that there are people who we thought we Americans who really don’t believe in America trying to make us into something we were never conceived to be.
I know in 2012, the next president will in fact be a tried and true American who will be beholden to the Constitution—same for our Congressional leaders. We won’t be duped again.
As the the life of the Democratic Party, James Carville got it wrong–they should be out of power (or at least extremely marginalized) for the next forty years.
March 8, 2010 at 5:43 pm
I’ve been thinking for a LONG time that someone oughtta make a montage video of all of Obama’s epic FAILS (thus far) and set it to the Who’s “Won’t get Fooled Again” and send that puppy VIRAL. But there’s just one problem: NONE OF US WERE THE ONES WHO GOT FOOLED!! Good luck finding someone who’ll admit voting for the fool.
March 8, 2010 at 6:17 pm
I find it SO hard to believe that some people are still fooled. And I find it even harder to believe that some people are not bothered by him being socilaist (beginning to believe communist). There are some people unwilling to leave the bubble.
March 9, 2010 at 12:56 am
I agree. I hate to go here, but I used to have no idea how the German people could just sit by while Hitler rose to power. Now unfortunatly we can see how a megalomanic gets started.
In our case, it was years of liberal/socialist (communist?) infiltration of media, education and the Democratic party combined with a Republican downfall and a (possibly manufactured) economic crises that has created a perfect storm.
Among many of our citizens, I think it probably hasn’t even occurred to many what he may be up to. It just doensn’t fit with their perception of the US. They count on this. Heck, I feel like I’m wearing a tin foil hat sometimes.
March 8, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Well, SanFranNan DID say that she was going to “drain the swamp” – I’m not sure this is exactly what she had in mind, but it sure does work for me!
March 8, 2010 at 8:10 pm
LOL! Works for me too.
March 8, 2010 at 6:54 pm
I agree that the positive in all this mess is that most people are paying more attention. The attitude of our representatives all being a bunch of Washington crooks and allowing that to occur is going away.
March 8, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Follow the money – ‘son of the devil’s spawn’ has such an appropriate ring, don’t you think – to find the rot from within:
A little trip down memory lane says a lot about how we got from there to here:
http://www.aim.org/special-report/the-hidden-soros-agenda-drugs-money-the-media-and-political-power/
The Hidden Soros Agenda: Drugs, Money, the Media, and Political Power
Special Report | By Cliff Kincaid | October 27, 2004
Soros may be the biggest political fat cat of all time.
How many times have we heard or read stories about Vice President Dick Cheney’s old firm, Halliburton, and its alleged influence over the government? A public company with more than 100,000 employees, Halliburton had revenues of $13 billion in 2001. However, George Soros is a human Halliburton who will be in a position if John Kerry is elected president to pull the strings. He is reportedly worth $7.2 billion. But his role in buying the White House for John Kerry has received generally positive coverage. Soros, we’re told, is a “philanthropist” committed to “democracy.” The Republican Party, by contrast, is supposed to be run by fat cats and Big Business, such as those at Halliburton.
Soros may be the biggest political fat cat of all time. Convicted in France of insider trading, Soros specializes in weakening or collapsing the currencies of entire nations for his own selfish interests. He is known as the man who broke the Bank of England. His power is such that his statements alone can cause currencies to go up or down. Other people suffer so he can get rich. But journalists don’t want to examine the questionable means by which he achieved his wealth because they share his goal of electing Kerry and the Democrats. Curiously, once he made his fortune he became a global socialist, endorsing global taxes on the very means he employed to get rich – international currency speculation and manipulation.
The media consistently ignore the fact that this so-called “philanthropist” has had several brushes with the law as he has laid siege to national economies and currencies. Hard-working U.S. businessmen understand how Soros has made his money. In protesting a Soros appearance hosted by the University of Toledo, Edwin J. Nagle III, president and CEO of the Nagle Companies, highlighted “the immoral and unethical means by which he achieved his wealth.” He added, “I certainly didn’t see included in his bio the stories on how he collapsed whole country’s currencies for his own self interests so that many may suffer.”
Here, Soros signed a consent decree in United States District Court, in a Securities and Exchange Commission case involving stock manipulation, and was fined $75,000 by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for holding positions “in excess of speculative limits.” Stories about Soros rarely, if ever, mention any of his legal problems.
Despite his vision of an “open society,” he operates an unregulated “hedge fund,” open only to the super-rich, and is currently fighting a proposal from the Bush-appointed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate and monitor these offshore entities. House Speaker Dennis Hastert said on national television that no one really knows where the Soros money comes from.
Soros has categorically denied receiving money from drug cartels or any form of criminal activity. The fact remains, however, that at least some of his financial operations have been based offshore, in banking and financial centers that are widely reported to be considered conducive to money-laundering. The Soros fund is based in the Netherlands Antilles, a self-governing federation of five Caribbean islands. A CIA factbook describes the region as “a transshipment point for South American drugs bound for the US and Europe; money-laundering center.”
Soros reportedly purchased a major stake in one of Colombia’s biggest banks, at a time when the Drug Enforcement Administration, in its study, “Colombian Economic Reform: The Impact on Drug Money Laundering within the Colombian Economy,” was documenting how major drug kingpins were taking advantage of the liberalization of the economy to put illicit drug revenue into legitimate businesses. The report stated: “U.S. and Colombian Government authorities have evidence of drug proceeds being deposited in every major bank in Colombia… A Colombian source indicated that many banks and businesses are owned covertly by principal members of the Cali cartel.”
His complex web of financial interests, companies and foundations makes Halliburton look like a Mom & Pop operation.
The charge we read in the press is that Halliburton gets government contracts and makes money from the Iraq war. Far less attention has been paid to the fact that the company has lost 54 employees as a result of that war. Nobody in the press mentions that Soros profits from the Kosovo war, which he supported as a preemptive strike against Yugoslavia, because he runs an investment fund that now does business there. Even though he pays big bucks to advertise his opposition to the Bush policy of democracy-building in Iraq, reporters still describe him as someone with a reputation for building democracy abroad.
However, his position on Iraq may be a diversion from the real reason he wants to get rid of Bush – his longstanding desire to adopt a national “retreat and defeat” approach to the drug problem.
Soros’ long-time goal has been to subvert the national anti-drug policy of the U.S. Government, to move away from the use of national and global law enforcement resources against the drug trade. He calls this “harm reduction,” meaning that criminal activity associated with the use of drugs will supposedly be reduced if the government takes over the drug trade and provides drugs and drug paraphernalia, including needles, to addicts. But law enforcement would still be required to keep drugs out of the hands of children. If this is not the case, then Soros intends to allow substances such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin to be distributed to children.
If Soros is able to capture the White House and implement his drug policy nationally, millions more people could be led to experiment with dangerous psychoactive substances and damage themselves, their families, and society. Even marijuana, depicted by the media as a “soft” drug, has extremely negative consequences. In the new book, “Marijuana and Madness,” one of the editors, Prof. Robin Murray of Britain’s Institute of Psychiatry, cites studies and evidence from around the world, some of it going back 40 years, linking the use of marijuana to mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and psychosis.
In a recent article about his growing financial and political clout, the Washington Post sanitized Soros by claiming that he “funded efforts to reform campaign laws, decriminalize marijuana and change [the] criminal justice system.” All of that is misleading, if not false. His “reform” of campaign laws left a loophole that will enable him to set a record “for the most money donated by an individual in an election cycle,” to quote the Post itself. So where are the investigative stories into Soros and his agenda?
A key part of the Soros agenda — his proposed surrender in the war on drugs — has been carefully concealed from the American people during this campaign. The war on Islamic terrorism is front and center, to be sure, but the war on drugs is still of major concern to millions of Americans, especially parents fearful of the influence of Hollywood and the drug culture.
A Soros role in formulating national drug policy is worthy of special press attention because his pro-drug legalization campaign has been considered at odds with the vast majority of Republicans and Democrats who share the view that legalization would make the drug problem far worse.
In the current campaign, however, a major transformation has taken place. Soros is said to have “privatized” or replaced the Democratic Party by subsidizing many different liberal-left organizations that comprise its political base and creating new ones, the “527″ organizations.
Among the candidates who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, Soros financially supported John Kerry, Wesley Clark, Senator Bob Graham, and Howard Dean. He has been praised by Senator Hillary Clinton and contributed to her Senate campaign and political action committee. He has also contributed to the political campaigns of Democratic Senators Tom Daschle, Carl Levin, John Corzine, Mary Landrieu, Debbie Stabenow, Charles Schumer, Joseph Biden, Patrick Leahy, Paul Sarbanes, Thomas Harkin, and Barbara Boxer. In 2002, Soros funded Al Gore for president and contributed $153,000 in “soft money” to the Democratic National Committee. Soros, who is also very close to Bill Clinton, was described by Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott as a “national treasure.”
It is significant that Soros and two of his sons have contributed $2000 each to Brad Carson, the Democratic Senate candidate in Oklahoma. His Republican opponent, Dr. Tom Coburn, was a member of the U.S. House for six years, where he developed a reputation as a leading opponent of efforts to legalize marijuana and fund needle exchange programs that facilitate illicit drug use. Coburn exposed Soros-style “harm reduction” as a backdoor approach to legalization of illicit drugs. Coburn was also a strong supporter of drug testing and even fought to require drug testing of members of Congress. Coburn and his staff voluntarily underwent drug testing. If elected to the Senate, say his supporters, Coburn would be the chamber’s leading voice for protecting children from the dangers of drug abuse and a scientific voice of reason against the Soros-supported movement that seeks to legalize drugs. It’s no wonder that Soros and his sons have targeted Coburn for defeat.
Soros has also contributed to Barack Obama, running for the Senate as a Democrat from Illinois. CNSNews.com reports that, “Not only did Soros donate to Obama’s campaign, but four other family members – Jennifer, sons Jonathan and Robert and wife Susan – did as well. Because of a special provision campaign finance laws, the Soroses were able to give a collective $60,000 to Obama during his primary challenge.”
Soros was described by the New Yorker as close to Harold Ickes, a former Clinton deputy chief of staff who runs the Media Fund, one of many Soros-supported “527″ groups. Soros described him as a “real pro.”
Away from the scrutiny or even the notice of the establishment press, Soros has emerged as a counter-culture hero.
The drug culture magazine, Heads, calls him “Daddy Weedbucks,” ran an excerpt from his book, Soros on Soros, and declared that “he drops the bucks exactly where they’re needed.” The September-October issue of the drug culture magazine High Times recognizes the stakes, noting that there are “ten reasons to get rid of Bush” and that one is that there will be “No legalization of pot” under Bush. The implication of the article was that the situation would change under Kerry.
None of this is being reported, however, by the major media.
His partner, Peter Lewis, whitewashed by the Post as “one of the country’s 10 most generous philanthropists,” was actually arrested in New Zealand for “importing” drugs, including hashish and marijuana.
The Human Halliburton
The media call him a billionaire “philanthropist” who “promotes democracy” and “democratic institutions” abroad. He has been invited to address the National Press Club on October 28, 2004, just before the election. But admitted marijuana user George Soros, who says he tried marijuana “and enjoyed it,” doesn’t just “give” money away. He spends money for a purpose because he wants to remake America and the world. He is depicted in a recent lengthy New Yorker article by Jane Mayer as well-intentioned, not that concerned about money, the victim of scurrilous attacks, and someone who simply wants his “ideas” to “be heard.” This is typical of the fawning coverage of Soros. Mayer made a brief reference to his collaborator, Peter B. Lewis, and his funding of “efforts to decriminalize marijuana,” but she failed to explore how Soros is himself committed to legalizing dangerous drugs. Mayer did disclose that a meeting was held in August, after the Democratic Party convention, of what critics call a “billionaire conspiracy” to defeat Bush. Soros and Lewis were among the participants in the meeting, which was supposed to be kept private.
Soros’ strong opposition to President Bush’s effort to create democratic institutions in Iraq contradicts his alleged support for democracy. But the media don’t point this out because they oppose Bush’s Iraq policy. Mayer, who interviewed the billionaire at length, suggests that Soros may be “looking for influence [in a Kerry Administration] to get out of Iraq” but that to pursue such an objective in exchange for his financial support to the candidate might be deemed “not appropriate” by some observers.
It would be unwise for the public to dismiss the idea that he would not demand implementation of his other “ideas,” including drug legalization.
Sometimes described as an atheist or agnostic, Soros has announced a vision of a secular “open society.” However, his agenda of drug legalization has remained largely hidden from public view during the current campaign.
While Soros may not want to openly talk about what he would expect out of a Kerry Administration, his allies have obviously been giving it much thought.
At the 2004 conference of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Ethan Nadelmann of the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance was asked about his association with Soros and the billionaire’s attempt to put John Kerry in the White House. The questioner asked, “Are we going to get some Supreme Court justices out this?” Nadelmann modestly answered, “We will see,” and cautioned that it may be difficult to deliver “all the goods.”
This is critical because the U.S. Supreme Court is already considering the matter of the several U.S. states that have laws on the books permitting some form of “medical marijuana” use, a violation of federal law, and could return to the subject in the future. The Court is expected to rule by June 2005 on a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, challenged by the Bush administration, that bars federal agents from interfering with the growing and use of marijuana by two women in California.
Hollywood has already been captured by the illegal drug lobby.
At the 2004 NORML conference, Allen St. Pierre of the NORML Foundation described how various U.S. television programs “have previewed marijuana in a way ultimately positive.” He named them as ER, Chicago Hope, the Practice, Sybil, Murphy Brown, Sports Night, Becker, West Wing, Roseanne, Sex in the City, Six Feet Under, Whoopi, Montel, That 70s Show, and the Larry David Show. “These shows are seen by tens of millions of people,” he said. “So that’s what it’s so crucial that we’re able to capture—and to demonstrate the change in—culture.”
The challenge for the drug culture is now to capture the U.S. Government. Soros is their front man.
Bloomberg.com quoted Strobe Talbott, U.S. deputy secretary of state from 1994 to 2001, as saying, “Whenever George Soros called and asked to meet, I would move heaven and earth to do so. I treated him like the foreign minister of another country because of all that he had done.” Even under the Bush Administration, Soros has been considered an important and influential figure. He gave a September 16, 2003, speech at the State Department on “America in the Global Community: Building Long-Term Security.”
So think about the clout he would have if he almost single-handedly buys the White House for John Kerry and plays a role in the election of several new Senators.
Rather than investigate the source of the Soros money, Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson has praised Soros for engineering the “privatization” of the Democratic Party through funding of the “527″ political groups and bypassing what he calls an incompetent Democratic Party apparatus. At the far-left “Take Back America” forum in June, Soros was photographed greeting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who introduced him to the group. She told the crowd that, “we need people like George Soros, who is fearless and willing to step up when it counts.” He stepped up with his money.
However, Meyerson and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman have attacked House Speaker Dennis Hastert for raising questions about where Soros gets his money.
A professed believer in democracy, Soros has used the “527″ loophole in a campaign finance law that he promoted to restrict the political activities of “special interests.” He has set a record “for the most money donated by an individual in an election cycle.” Those “special interests” turned out to be other people — not him. He has since poured millions of dollars into anti-Bush groups and voter registration drives, some marked by alleged fraud, for the Democratic Party.
His commitment to democracy is never questioned. Typical of the pro-Soros media coverage was a USA Today story on June 1 that gave Soros credit for freeing millions of people from communism and “supporting democracy.” The story ignored his insider trading conviction. While Soros provided some funding to anti-communist groups during the Cold War, his career has been designed to make money and extend his influence over nations and people. Communism was a threat because it was not hospitable to his investments.
An excellent example of how he operates is Kosovo. As indicated earlier, it is relevant to note that, after the Soros-supported war on Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia, a Soros fund announced in 2000 that it was investing $150 million — with loan guarantees from the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation — in the Balkans. It was called the “Southeast Europe Equity Fund.” By 2002, the OPIC-supported size of the investment had risen to $200 million and OPIC announced that Soros Investment Capital, Ltd. Fund Yugoslavia had acquired a controlling stake in Eksimbanka, a private commercial bank in Serbia, and had financed the start-up of Serbia Broadband Networks, the leading cable television and broadband services company in Serbia.
What’s more, his “open society” doesn’t extend to himself. He unregulated “hedge funds,” open only to the super rich, are beyond public scrutiny or the interest of the press. In a curious chapter of his career, he reportedly invested in an energy company run by George W. Bush, in an unsuccessful attempt to buy influence with the Bush family.
As noted, in another curious development, the global capitalist has become a global socialist advocating a global tax, known as the Tobin Tax, on the means by which he exploited the global capitalist system and became rich – international currency speculation and manipulation. Soros has declared that the Tobin Tax is a “valid suggestion” for raising international revenue and that opposition to implementing the tax can be overcome. What has not been reported is that Thomas Palley, the director of the Globalization Reform Project at Soros’ Open Society Institute, was a featured speaker at a January 2003 event in Washington, D.C. to discuss how to implement the tax.
“He made his money the old-fashioned way, on Wall Street,” wrote Post columnist Harold Meyerson. In fact, he made his money through investment techniques that are not available to ordinary investors, and his financial interventions can affect nations and their economies.
Soros claims that the “527″ organizations he funds “file detailed and frequent reports with government regulators.” On the January 9 NOW With Bill Moyers program on PBS, Charles Lewis of the Soros-funded Center for Public Integrity argued that while Soros was funding 527 groups, Soros was disclosing these contributions and that the money could be tracked.
Again, that begs the question of where he gets his money.
His use of that loophole — in a law that he promoted to restrict the influence of outside “special interests” on political campaigns — is suspicious and curious on its face. Equally curious, Soros claims that the Bush Administration’s reaction to 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq caused him to spend millions of dollars through these “527″ organizations to defeat Bush. However, Soros favored the Clinton Administration’s preemptive attack on Yugoslavia, in the absence of any threat to the U.S. and without U.S. Congressional authorization.
While Soros runs around the country talking about defeating Bush, mostly because of his Iraq policy, he is using his money to target other candidates who have prosecuted the war on drugs.
The pro-Soros national media have refused to examine the implications of a ruling by New York State Supreme Court Justice Bernard Malone. He ruled that it was improper for the Soros-backed Working Families Party to get involvement in a Democratic primary for District Attorney and he referred the case to local prosecutors and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for a possible criminal investigation. Thanks to the money provided by Soros, David Soares defeated incumbent District Attorney Paul Clyne in the Democratic primary. At the time of Clyne’s defeat, Ethan Nadelmann of the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance Network said he was proud that his group had “contributed to this race” and that “what happened in Albany” has “national resonance.” That suggested to some that Soros, if he is successful in putting John Kerry in the White House, would change the nation’s anti-drug policy.
The Criminals Lobby
Soros, who lives in New York, has also contributed $150,000 to a California ballot measure, proposition 66, to overturn the three-strikes law, which mandates prison terms of 25-years-to-life for defendants convicted of a third felony. The ballot measure is opposed by the state’s district attorneys and law enforcement agencies.
In other unsavory connections, a Soros grant was given to Linda Evans, who was pardoned by Bill Clinton for her involvement in the Weather Underground terrorist group. The Weather Underground was involved in the 1981 Brinks robbery, in which three murders were committed, and a series of bombings, including the bombing of the U.S. Capitol in November 1983.
The Baltimore, Maryland, branch of the OSI on May 12 hosted Bernardine Dohrn, another former member of the Weather Underground who once expressed solidarity with mass murderer Charles Manson, at a forum on criminal justice issues. Speaking to a Weather Underground “war council” in Michigan in 1969, Dohrn gave a three-fingered “fork salute” to Manson. As noted by Ami Naramor of The Claremont Institute, “Calling Manson’s victims the ‘Tate Eight,’ Dohrn gloated over the fact that actress Sharon Tate, who was pregnant at the time, had been stabbed with a fork in her womb. ‘Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!’” Dohrn, now an associate professor and director at Northwestern University’s Children and Justice Center, was a member of the advisory committee of the “children’s rights watch” project of Human Rights Watch, funded by Soros.
Not coincidentally, the drug culture has embraced the Weather Underground. High Times magazine has called David Gilbert, a Weather Underground member now in prison, an “anti-imperialist political prisoner” and has hailed his book, No Surrender. High Times says Gilbert works behind bars for “prisoners’ rights” – a favorite cause of Soros.
The latest development is creation of “Cannabis Consumers,” a bizarre organization of out-of-the-closet illegal pot smokers, formed to celebrate and glorify the drug. Director Mikki Norris, who says her group received a grant from the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance, says, “we honor George Soros.”
The Soros-supported Drug Policy Alliance supports “marijuana clubs” currently dispensing the drug, supposedly on “medical” grounds. The federal government has tried to close down these clubs—a policy that could change if Soros gains access to and influence over the White House. Several states have passed “medical marijuana” initiatives, funded by Soros, attempting to provide the drug under the cover of treating illnesses. But the American people have been kept in the dark about whether the Soros campaign to weaken drug laws would be embraced and implemented on a national basis by a Kerry Administration.
One of the few reporters to question the Soros agenda is John Berlau of Insight magazine, who asked whether Soros would benefit financially from his huge expenditures on political activity. Michael Vachon, the spokesman for Soros Fund Management in New York City, said, “I have no faith in the ability or desire of Insight magazine to portray George Soros’ activities in an unbiased manner.” Pressed, he said, “There’s no relationship between the policy prescriptions George Soros recommends and his own financial holdings. He doesn’t make policy recommendations to increase his own personal wealth. That’s not what motivates him.”
There can be no doubt, however, that if the Soros plan for drug legalization goes forward, there would have to be an official infrastructure in place to finance drug production and distribution and handle the enormous profits that will be made from legalization. Legalization will not eliminate drug profits, it will only transfer some of them to government and “legitimate” industries. Soros could be poised to invest in those industries and companies.
He is laying the groundwork for the creation of a system under which government and corporations would legalize, dispense and advertise hard drugs, much like tobacco or alcohol, and supply addicts with needles and drug paraphernalia. In effect, Soros appears to be financing drug legalization for the purpose of creating a new market for federal payments to underwrite drug purchases for addicts. Soros appears to favor an indoor version of “Needle Park,” where addicts come to government offices to inject or smoke their drugs at taxpayer expense.
His position is also reflected in his funding of the ACLU, which itself favors the legalization of all drugs—even heroin and crack cocaine—and opposes virtually all measures taken to curtail drug use. In another example of its extremist approach, the group has rejected funds from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and participation in the Combined Federal Campaign, because acceptance of the money would require adopting measures to make sure it does not employ terrorists or support terrorist activity.
Soros hired Aryeh Neier as president of his Open Society Institute (OSI) in 1993. Neier worked for the ACLU for 15 years, including eight as national director.
Typically, Soros and his cronies present the current “war on drugs” as draconian, a huge waste of money and a threat to civil liberties. Legalization is then presented, usually couched in terms of reducing the harm associated with illegal use and procurement of drugs. The audience is never presented with a third option—eradication of drug crops at home and abroad, an intensified military/intelligence effort against drug lords abroad, tougher sentences for users and dealers, and more drug testing.
In 1995, Soros made a major contribution to the Council on Foreign Relations, which two years later, under the leadership of Mathea Falco, released a comprehensive report on U.S. international drug control strategy, entitled, Rethinking International Drug Control. However, A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times, who participated in the task force that drafted the report, declined to endorse it, saying that it “is so negative in substance and tone about United States efforts to stem drug use, production and distribution that it amounts to an invitation to drop those efforts…”
Soros clearly has his sights set on global policy on drugs. Soros was a signer of a 1998 letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urging a radical revamping of global anti-drug policies. Another signer was Morton H. Halperin, a former Department of Defense and National Security Council Official.
In a typical laudatory article about Soros, USA Today author Rick Hampson made a brief reference to his belief in “liberalized drug laws.” Nothing was said, however, about how Soros has managed to liberalize or weaken those laws across the country, and how he has his sights set on national anti-drug policy. The National District Attorneys Association says that since 1996 “incremental changes in state drug laws have continued at an alarming rate across our nation” and they are designed to “ultimately legalize drugs.” Soros was identified in this report as one of the wealthy individuals behind this “very well financed” drug legalization movement that is “highly adept at manipulating the media.”
In an October 18 Newsweek story, “Can a Billionaire Beat Bush?” writer Marcus Mabry said that Soros will “be there” even if Bush wins, ready to “build a new left…” Soros and other ” wealthy progressives,” he says, “will set about assembling the infrastructure,” including think tanks, foundations, and civic groups, of this “new left.”
But Soros has already done this. The late left-wing writer, Walt Contreras Sheasby, noted that the Soros influence “is one of those hushed secrets inside the left…” and that he has subsidized “many of the activist groups, luminaries and publications of the American left…”
Mabry completely ignored his pro-drug legalization agenda and erroneously claimed that his involvement in this year’s presidential campaign is “his first significant involvement in American electoral politics.” Mabry ignored Soros’s funding of at least 19 initiatives to weaken drug laws.
Journalists carefully conceal their own conflicts of interest. On the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) NOW With Bill Moyers program on January 9 of this year, Moyers interviewed Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity about the big money supporting the presidential candidates. But little time and attention was paid to how Soros was trying to buy the White House and pouring millions of dollars into groups such as MoveOn.org to bring this about. Moyers, former press secretary to President Lyndon Johnson, failed to tell his viewers that he is on the board of Soros’ Open Society Institute and that it has funneled $1.7 million into Lewis and his Center for Public Integrity. Moyers had conducted and aired an interview with Soros on September 12, 2003, where he declared, “The Republican Party has been captured by a bunch of extremists…” Soros was presented as an opponent of unchecked capitalism and a supporter of democracy and nation-building abroad.
The power of the Soros-supported media network was demonstrated in mid-October when a controversy emerged over Sinclair Broadcasting airing parts of Stolen Honor, a film raising questions about the detrimental impact of John Kerry’s 1971 anti-war testimony on U.S. Vietnam POWs being held by the communists. Kerry had branded U.S. soldiers as war criminals, and POWs interviewed in Stolen Honor said this resulted in more torture to them. The Democratic Party, the Kerry campaign, and various groups denounced Sinclair for planning to air Stolen Honor. MediaChannel.org, Common Cause, the Alliance for Better Campaigns, Media Access Project, Media for Democracy, and the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ held an anti-Sinclair news conference. They denounced Sinclair for allegedly abusing the public airwaves by planning to air “propaganda.” All of these organizations — except for the possible exception of the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ — are funded by Soros.
Media Matters, a left-wing media watchdog group that was also pressuring Sinclair to abandon plans to air the testimony of the former POWs, was “developed” with help from the Center for American Progress, funded by Soros.
The attack on Sinclair had the effect of diverting attention away from the extensive and controversial media connections of Soros, his foundations, and the organizations they subsidize, and legitimate questions about the Soros-supported candidate John Kerry. These groups – and the many prominent journalists who serve on their boards – make Sinclair look penny ante.
Pro-Soros media coverage dates back many years and continues to the present day, as detailed in this report. In 1996, Dan Rather’s CBS Evening News highlighted him as a philanthropist and humanitarian, someone who had made a fortune but was now making a difference. The story by correspondent Anthony Mason ignored his commitment to legalization of drugs.
That same year, Judith Miller of the New York Times wrote that he was “bringing his philanthropy home.” While she made a brief reference to his drug legalization agenda, the headline over the piece said he was committed to “social justice.” His close adviser, Aryeh Neier, a longtime ACLU official, was described merely as a “human rights advocate.”
On the far left, The Nation magazine and its Nation Institute have been supported by OSI. The magazine published a generally flattering piece about the Soros-funded Center for American Progress.
In 1994 Soros received the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award at an International Press Freedom Awards dinner, sponsored by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Five years earlier, OSI gave 4 grants, totaling $220,000, to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Benjamin was senior executive producer at CBS News and served briefly as chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists before his death in 1988.
The Soros media connections include:
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An investor in the Times Mirror Company, Soros funded the Project on Media Ownership, headed by Professor Mark Crispin Miller at New York University. Whose purpose was expose “media concentration.” A total of $300,000 over several years came from George Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI). In 1999, a survey commissioned by the Project on Media Ownership and the Benton Foundation and paid for by OSI found that seventy-nine percent of adults would favor a law requiring commercial broadcasters to pay 5 percent of their revenues into a fund for public broadcasting.
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Eric Alterman of The Nation has hailed Soros for spending millions on “education campaigns with America Coming Together, voter mobilization drives with MoveOn.org and research activities with the Center for American Progress (CAP)–where I am a senior fellow…” Alterman says his own magazine, The Nation, is viewed as out of the mainstream in part because of “the continued appearance in its pages of a long-time Stalinist communist, Alexander Cockburn, whose unabashed hatred for both America and Israel … tarnish the reputation of its otherwise serious contributors.” Alterman’s mentor, I.F. Stone, was a paid agent of the KGB and a Stalinist.
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In the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Orville Schell said that Soros had written a “succinct and well-reasoned book,” The Bubble of American Supremacy, which ought “to provide a welcome template for how the candidates might begin to think their way through to a more coherent view of America’s place in the world.” Soros had spoken on March 3 at the Goldman Forum on the Press and Foreign Affairs, sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. The event was a conversation between Soros and Journalism Dean Orville Schell.
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OSI gave $60,000 to the Independent Media Institute , whose executive director, Don Hazen, is a former publisher of Mother Jones. Hazen has called Soros a “progressive philanthropist.” A story carried by the Independent Media Institute on its AlterNet project says Soros “believes in democracy, positive international relations and effective strategies to reduce poverty, among other things.”
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OSI gave a $75,000 grant to the Center for Investigative Reporting. The group’s board of advisers includes prominent journalists.
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OSI gave $246,528 to the Center for Public Integrity, headed by former CBS News producer Charles Lewis, “to support the continuing expansion of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.” A total of $1 million went for “the Global Access Project.” In total, it is estimated that the group has received $1.7 from Soros.
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OSI gave $200,000 to the Fund for Investigative Journalism. This group, too, features prominent journalists on its board.
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OSI’s “Network Media Program” gave $22,157 to Investigative Reporters & Editors.
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Soros Foundations have provided $160,000 to MediaChannel.org, a so-called “media issues supersite, featuring criticism, breaking news, and investigative reporting from hundreds of organizations worldwide.” The executive editor is Danny Schecter, a former news program producer and investigative reporter at CNN and ABC. It was created by Globalvision News Network, whose board includes “Senior executives from the world’s leading media firms.”
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OSI has contributed $70,000 toward the far-left Independent Media Center, or Indymedia, known as an “independent newsgathering collective,” whose servers were seized by a federal law enforcement agency on October 7. The action was apparently related to an investigation into international terrorism, kidnapping or money laundering.
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OSI provided $600,000 to the Media Access Project, a so-called telecommunications public interest law firm critical of conservative influence in the major media.
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OSI provide $30,000 to the Media Awareness Project, a “worldwide network dedicated to drug policy reform” and promoting “balanced media coverage” of the drug issue.
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OSI provided $200,000 to the Association for Progressive Communications, “an international network…working for peace, human rights, development and protection of the environment…”
Considering all of the money that Soros or his organizations have provided to news organizations, it should be no surprise to learn that journalists love him. His web site advises visitors to “read about George Soros from The New York Times, USA Today, Time Magazine, et al.,” all of which are reprinted on the site and highly favorable. His new web site features several complimentary statements about Soros from articles in the press and media figures.
Either the media fear his wealth and power, they favor his positions on the issues, or they want access to his money. The people have a right to know.
March 8, 2010 at 4:19 pm
“Some day, when we write a book on the Democrat Civi War of 2008-2012″
HB, when you publish a book, I will buy several copies and donate them to liberaries in my area.
People have no clue what happened on May 31th, 2008. The impact is and will be felt in the 2010 elections and 2012 elections.
March 9, 2010 at 1:14 am
Yes, May 31, 2008 was the day the Democrat Civil War began but it went unnoticed by many and/or dismissed by others. I remember telling a friend (a fellow Hillary supporter) when Obama won the election in November 2008 and the democrats were on a “high” that the party that was in real trouble this time around was not the republican party – it was the dems because they had lost so many Hillary voters – the rank and file dems, the backbone of the party.
And the youth voters that Obama brought in and the independents would more than likely be “fair-weather” voters.
It truly is sad for this country. Obama and the democrat leadership in congress could turn some things around even at this late date if they simply decided to listen to the American people and go back back to the drawing board regarding healthcare reform and really bring in the republicans and their ideas, instead of making a “mockery” of the word “bi-partisanship”. They could turn things around if both parties in congress worked on legislation that truly put Americans back to work. But no, the democrat leadership in congress and this president repeatedly turn a deaf ear to the American people. As a result of this, 2010 will bring massive defeat to the democrats. The corruption is just too deep in the party. Every day brings more disturbing stories of scandal and hypocrisy. I watched Fox Cable News shows tonight and I found Congressman Massa’s revelatons, whether entirely true or not, another nail in the coffin for the democrats come November. Add to this the “state of the economy” and you have a recipe for a landslide defeat for dems.
March 8, 2010 at 4:37 pm
At some point there only so many holes you can plug up before the whole dam bursts from the pressure.
I just wonder what is going to be left behind after the water recedes?
March 8, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Strong foundations -
March 8, 2010 at 4:37 pm
OMG!
“Sex and the Single Senator: Maria Cantwell Rumored to Be Having Affair with Married Reporter”
its rumored she is having an affair with that idiot on CNBS — John Hardwood — another WH-butt kisser.
ace’s site has the info.
March 8, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Thanks for the heads up.
March 8, 2010 at 6:05 pm
That’s my senator! I’m so proud. She is completely unresponsive to her constituents outside of King County and she does not care about anyone who does not toe the liberal line. Same with Patty Murray. Can’t stand either of them. I vote the other guy in every single election, but the King County population and machine are both too strong for the rest of the state. Same reason we have Gov. Gregoire instead of Rossi. Sad.
March 8, 2010 at 9:47 pm
I still remember seeing Patty Murray during a congressinal (sp?) hearing when the military commanders were explaining the success of the surge in Iraq.
She got all flustered and said, “I suppose you’re gonna tell me I can take my family on vacation there”. What a nut!! Why do these liberals hate america and the military so damn much?
March 8, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Do you have a link to Ace’s site?
March 9, 2010 at 7:24 am
ace.mu.nu
March 9, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Thanks!
March 8, 2010 at 4:38 pm
I’m keeping an eye out for how the fundraising numbers top out. I am fully convinced, and have been since it was first discussed, that the stimulus bill had so many fuzzy distinctions on what constituents it could send money to, that it is a money laundering operation on le grande scale. If you figure that any “community-based” group can get its hands on election year stimulus money, then a portion of that federal money can get donated back to the DNC coffers.
I have a feeling that the younger generation will realize what results of liberal dreams when hit with reality. Its just a shame more of them don’t get taught these lessons in school.
I’m also thinking that the more and more people realize what public sector employee unions have been doing to our financial standing, both at state and federal levels, that there will be a huge backlash against the unions and their benefactors, i.e. democrats
March 8, 2010 at 4:47 pm
The issue of public sector salaries outpacing private sector salaries on the backs of taxpayers is such a lay up issue for conservatives (or anyone with a brain)
For every public sector employee, there is a finite amount of taxes that can support that role. Democrats seem to think that the tax revenue is infinite.
March 8, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Point well made. It is so frustrating to be a conservative educator and see the outrageousness of the textbook industry and NEA.
March 8, 2010 at 4:42 pm
what’s up with Rahm and Massa.
Are they both homosexual?
Is Rahm homosexual?
Is it true that Obama is bisexual?
the scene in the shower just seems so bizarre, it makes me wonder if there is more to all the rumors about Obama having a gay lover in the Church choir, and offing him to prevent him from going public.
just so bizarre!
March 8, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Massa is not homosexual. Keep in mind he had a navy career.
March 8, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Why is he not homosexual – he said so in public? Look at that CA state senator – Rayburn? – and the mess he got in. Wasn’t gay either….
March 9, 2010 at 1:48 pm
you did not get the point about mentioning the Navy career.
I never make false assumptions. Let him come out of the closet if he was homosexual…
March 9, 2010 at 1:49 pm
BTW the later pollie to have been caught… Rayburn…. has admitted that he is homosexual.
March 8, 2010 at 6:07 pm
there were two dead gays in Chicago with links to Obama. One of them was in the Trinity choir.
March 8, 2010 at 6:33 pm
What? Explain
March 8, 2010 at 6:57 pm
Yeah, I’m lost too.
March 8, 2010 at 8:43 pm
Yeah, I used to read this all over the place on the internet. It seemed pretty well documented. Went back and googled just now to give you some links, and I get nothing. I think Larry Sinclair still has some of the info and names but everyone has been “trained” to see him as a kook. I will keep looking. I know it was pretty reliable news reporting at the time.
March 8, 2010 at 9:44 pm
One of the reasons for Rham naked could have been to avoid any wire tapping problem.
March 9, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Larry Sinclair’s book is available on Amazon. I think that if you search the archives here, you might find more info also. Larry’s book is informative and mentions a lot of the people around the O today.
March 8, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Found this excerpt from Free Republic.
“Donald Young, a vibrant, charismatic choir director at one of Chicago’s largest open and affirming black congregations, Trinity United Church of Christ, was found shot to death this past Sunday in his home. Young,47, was a longtime member of Trinity’s choir, initially singing bass and then moving up the ranks to become one of its most electrifying and popular directors.”
I read someone, maybe in comments, that he supposedly was gay and was acquainted, very well, with Obama, who was a member of the church.
March 8, 2010 at 10:44 pm
I am always suspicious of couples who make an effort to show their “love’, or “bond” publicly, as the obamas seem to be doing when they go out on dates. It is like they want to be sure to be seen as a couple. I’m just betting it is their way of covering for his indiscretions, or squelching any rumors.
Why else make such a big deal about it?
The guy is such a phoney and so evil.
March 8, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Obama’s flirt openly at event.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/08/obamas-flirt-openly-at-wh_n_490863.html
The future will show how phoney they both are. good thing grandma is raising the girls.
March 9, 2010 at 12:05 am
politico also has a new story about the obamas being out on another date.
getting fishy out there.
March 8, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Looks like several black gay men were killed in Chicago.
curiouser and curiouser!
http://cbs2chicago.com/local/Donald.Young.Trinity.2.619036.html
March 8, 2010 at 4:44 pm
The difference to me.. when they (Clintons)saw it wasnt going to pass.. they dropped it.
The economy wasnt a mess either.
I didnt want universal healthcare then either.
The BIG difference in Obama and Clintons to me is.. I NEVER once thought the Clintons hated our country and would purposely destroy our economy.. NEVER.
It will take a LOOOOONG time for democrats to recover from this. Right now.. there are no democrats saying.. ‘wait a minute here’..
They are all in lock step. So.. they all look nuts to me.
March 8, 2010 at 4:46 pm
kristi:
bingo! the clintons tried and frankly they are moderates, and they care about this country, they are not radical lefty loonies.
I was a lifelong registered staunch democrat until 2008, and I am telling you, the democrat brand is done, kick a fork in it. I am this disgusted at them, and heck I was a democrat.
March 8, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Clintons would have concentrated on fixing the economy.
If they had come to office during this time.. the priority would not be healthcare.. it would be JOBS.
March 8, 2010 at 5:21 pm
The Clintons were neither deaf nor blind (as Obama and his cronies apparently are) and they would know that “we the people” do NOT want that hcb, but DO want help with the economy.
March 8, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Remember all the flack they (Clintons) got that they were too concerned with the polls..
Well arent the polls what tells them what America wants?
In my opinion.. as a conservative. Hilliary would have worked on the economy…become a hero and saved her healthcare plan for 2011….dems would retain their majority and lay claim that dems are better for the ecomony.
Obama has now cemeted the fact that dems are terrible for the economy.
March 8, 2010 at 5:24 pm
That’s the one thing.. the ONE thing… that has me the most puzzled and, yes, concerned, about Hillary. She and Bill can see that the dem party is “done, you can stick a fork in it” but yet they doggedly stick to it; even campaigning for “The One”. I may be remembering wrong, but didn’t Bill just recently do a push for O’s hcb? You see, this is the kind of thing that has me thinking….
March 8, 2010 at 7:07 pm
There are people we don’t like who we constantly bake cupcakes for. Delicious cupcakes filled with frosting. We bake great, fattening, delicious, irrestistable cupcakes.
And we give them to guys who are narcissists and obsess over their weight…so the cupcakes aren’t gestures of friendship, but really the worst things for them all things considered in Boystown.
Sometimes you need to take your rivals and detractors down creatively.
March 8, 2010 at 5:51 pm
ssmith
I am a fifth generation Republican and I am as disgusted with the likes of Mitch Mc Connell, Mc Lame, Gingstink, and Grahamnesty as you are with the Democrats.
The political class, the media elites, and wackodemia are so deluded, power mad, and decadent they are destroying our country, our kids futures, and endangering our nation’s security.
March 8, 2010 at 6:22 pm
The R’s are by no means “clean”. They are dirt too. However, if you put their dirt up against the current dems… well… their dirt may be “dirt” but the dems is like a cesspool of filth…
March 8, 2010 at 7:33 pm
The Repubs are unclean, but NONE of them voted for the Senate bill on12/24/2009. There is a BIG difference between them and Obama’s Marxist friends.
We need to do as much house cleaning as we can in November and vote in as many Constitution-Packing conservatives as we can.
My preference for Boxer’s seat is Chuck DeVore, who whipped out his pocket constitution right there on Glenn Beck. He out-constitutionalized Beck himself!!!
March 8, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Someone posted on “Monday’s Thread” that
Chuck DeVore won the CRC
Endorsement on the 1st vote(over Carly Fiorina)!
Great News!
March 8, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Here’s another interesting item included in the health”destruction” bill. Nanny state at its worst.
No wonder they Boyz think there is a “war” within the dem party. The more people find out about this monster bill, the worse the monster gets!
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/guess_whos_coming_to_your_hous_1.html
March 8, 2010 at 6:08 pm
My husband is a vet, I have a child who has developmental delays from a tumor he had at birth (very slight, thank God, and the tumor is gone) and we homeschool. I’ll call the police on someone who shows up to “help” with out health care. If the police won’t come, I’ll kick them to the street myself.
March 8, 2010 at 4:48 pm
I think one of the questions is – how long will the LSM keep silent on everything that’s going on and will lead to the demise of the DNC? Are Obama-ites really believing that since they aren’t hearing it from Katie Couric’s mouth then it’s not happening?
In any other situation – the LSM would have been all over this stuff. They loved Bill, but they didn’t wait a day before reporting on the Lewinski scandal. If Drudge (who I believe broke the story.) reported the very same thing today with Obama – we’d never hear it mentioned on the nightly news.
So is the DNC going to take Media down with it?
March 8, 2010 at 5:04 pm
oh yea.
the lame stream media is already down.
they are probably getting obamamoney just to stay afloat.
March 9, 2010 at 1:57 pm
more like they are getting Soros money and Ford Foundation money.
March 8, 2010 at 5:14 pm
KJA:
it no longer matter if they cover stuff or not.
THis is how the transition from trusting the LSM to not trusting the LSM happens (at least what happened to me).
–you hear a story on CNN, you trust it, then you see on FOX News, that CNN DELIBERATELY didn’t let the viewers know about some information that would have changed the storyline, or in Sarah and Hillary’s case, CNN OUTRIGHT LIED about certain stories.
After that, why would a person trust that news story? Doubt comes in, what other future stories would CNN, or CBS or ABS or NBS lie about, deceive the public about??
See, the thing is, with the Internet, that filter that the LSM had NO LONGER EXISTS. And the LSM has no clue, this is why they are losing revelance, at an accelerating rate. They cannot direct the storyline b.c they lack credibility, the trust is gone.
And the more the LSM lies and keeps pushing their liberal pushing storyline crap, people will just go to Fox or online to see what the LSM has been deliberately lying about, and eventually no one trusts the LSM.
So, yes, the un-DNC if going down, the LSM is going down
March 8, 2010 at 5:23 pm
*So, yes, the un-DNC is going down, and the LSM is going down
March 8, 2010 at 5:36 pm
ssmith-I agree both going down, and make it happen at warp speed. When the DNC decided to install Obama over the will of the voters (Dems) over Hillary through voter fraud, violence and threats at the convention, every crime committed that you can imagine, then they say “trust us”. NO NEVER AGAIN CAN WE EVER TRUST LIARS LIKE YOU. I think if Hillary was doing health care today-she would put her ideas out there, expecting to do battle with the Republicans (natural process) and strike a balance somewhere in the middle. Looking at all the places that health care needs reform-starting with waste and fraud.
March 9, 2010 at 2:01 pm
I keep telling the story about CNN and Honduras.
The reporter was in the tank with Zelaya’s mob.
I was in the USA, in Hartford, when Zelaya tried to return the first time. The CNN coverage was disgusting. They were so pro-Zelaya it was not funny in the slightest.
Then I saw the evidence via the Internet that this reporter and those present faked a death scene, claiming that a protester had been shot to death…. NOT!!!!!
Who would trust CNN after something like their fauxtography trick?
March 8, 2010 at 5:13 pm
You gotta watch this
March 8, 2010 at 10:35 pm
Funny–love that gal with the bow, trying desperately to point out the appalling fact…”There’s a COMMUNIST living in the WHITE HOUSE.”
Laugh to keep from screaming.
March 9, 2010 at 12:16 am
Go to You Tube and you can probably find more of Victoria’s videos. Her columns are on Breitbart and some other places. She is one smart lady– smart like a fox!!
March 8, 2010 at 5:27 pm
The Democrat balkanization started way before 2008…it started back in Bill/Hill’s administration, with Hill’s outreach to Soros and his pot o’ gold:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/ShadowParty.asp
The “Shadow Party” is a term originally devised by journalists to describe “527″ political committees promoting Democratic Party agendas. It is here used more specifically to refer to the network of non-profit activist groups organized by George Soros and others to mobilize resources — money, get-out-the-vote drives, campaign advertising and policy iniatives — to elect Democratic candidates and guide the Democratic Party towards the left. The Internet fund-raising operation MoveOn.org is a key component. The Shadow Party in this sense was conceived and organized principally by Soros, Hillary Clinton and Harold Ickes. Its efforts are amplified by, and coordinated with, key government unions and the activist groups associated with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The key organizers of these groups are veterans of the Sixties left.
March 8, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Our nation is reaping the dividends of that unfortunate initiative.
Time to vote ‘em ALL out.
We couldn’t possibly do any worse.
March 8, 2010 at 5:35 pm
As for why…funny you should mention Yugoslavia, but Soros’ fingerprints were all over the Clintons’ wars in the Balkans.
March 8, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Perhaps as a separate group (distinct from the first, the diehard Obamatons) all those who remain Democrats for pragmatic reasons but otherwise would openly declare themselves as socialists (like Bernie Sanders), or who, for whatever reason (and who can fathom what really actuates the likes of Cynthia McKinney?) would “move on” to join the Greens or some other party.
March 8, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Massa – who did indeed resign officially, will be on Glenn Beck (Fox News) tomorrow for the full hour.
March 8, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Ok, so what gives here? Is he afraid? Is it that he doesn’t have the guts to stay in there an vote against what they want? Perhaps they threatened him with more than just a jab in the chest with a finger in the shower if he stayed in and voted his heart and constituency… tomorrow’s Beck should be interesting. I’m not sure if I’ll be home tomorrow afternoon or not yet. Hope I am- I hate to miss that.
March 8, 2010 at 6:11 pm
he has cancer. I think the resignation was due to health reasons.
This other stuff came on top of his health issues.
March 9, 2010 at 2:03 am
I’m looking forward to finding out more too – although I probably won’t be home either during Beck’s interview. Several people who are of a more republican/conservative persuasion also seemed to be not convinced about Massa’s story about Emmanuel. But I listened to the taped interviews and Massa seems genuinely angry. Maybe he is “thin-skinned” but if there is any truth in his story about Emmanuel walking in on him while he was showering in the congressional gym locker-room and threatening him, it looks very bad for Emmanuel. Apparently Massa does admit to using inappropriate language to a male office worker. Because of this, he is being investigated for sexual harassment. He says he was forced out because of his “no vote” on healthcare reform. Maybe its a combination of both as to why he resigned as well as health reasons.
March 8, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Hope he’s still alive tomorrow.
March 8, 2010 at 10:46 pm
I listen to the news at 5 CST with Brett Baier on Fox News. I like the discussion panel 2/3rd’s of the way into the show. None of them had anything stellar to say about Massa. They felt that there wasn’t much to his accusations – this included Charles Krauthammer (my hero), Bill Crystal and, of course Juan Williams (whom I disagree with quite a bit but whom I find to be rather fair-minded most of the time.)
March 8, 2010 at 11:01 pm
I like Charles, too. However, I find the ‘inside-the-beltway’ commentators, miss alot of the things that we, ordinary citizens, grasp from afar. charles was way behind on detecting Obama’s falseness, and the importance of the tea partiers. He’s seems to be lagging behind a step or two in some really obvious trends.
March 8, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Voters need to remember that current Democrats can still pass legislation after the November elections. Be determined. Vote them out. This needs to be a big win.
March 8, 2010 at 6:33 pm
There are rumors that if the bill does not pass now, Pelosi/Reid/Utopia will bring it back up for vote after the Nov elections and before seating the new Congress…They hope they can convince folks that lost to vote for the bill. . .
Reminds me of a relentless enemy looking for a weak spot in the defense systems.
March 8, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Let them try….
March 8, 2010 at 6:49 pm
It reminds me of St. Augustine’s description of the world after Satan’s defeat. He describes is as mop up after the war. The enemy has lost, a winner has been declared, but there is still clean up and many, if not most, of the losses happen during that clean up, because the enemy now has nothing to lose by taking down as many with him.
March 8, 2010 at 6:22 pm
“…Obama joked that the political battle has contributed to the recent rise in his cholesterol, Kind said, and the president noted how ironic it would be if health care drove him to his grave…” http://www.foxnation.com
March 8, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Gosh…I pray this doesn’t happen. If he dies in office, it’s over. People will revere him like they did JFK, whether he did a good job or not. And if they can tack it on to a health reform push, they will.
March 8, 2010 at 10:29 pm
No kidding.. every street will be Obama ave. .. and how many Obama elementary schools would there be. Gag.
Nope.. go down as the worst President in history is what I want..
Live to be 100 with that label, Obama.
March 9, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Somehow I doubt that he will get the JFK treatment. Look how it is turning out for FLOTUS. Very few think she is any fashion icon.
March 9, 2010 at 2:04 pm
I wish…. the sooner the better…. just saying….
March 8, 2010 at 6:25 pm
The Democrats will regroup after the Barrack disaster. Probably they will become more centrist as the far left will be discredited after the reign of Dr. Utopia.
I’ve been following politics for 40 years and I have seen obits written for both the Republican and Democrat party. They both come back eventually when the independent voters get tired of the party in power.
What’s amazing about Barry is that he already has people disgusted with the Democratic party after only a year in office. That has to be a new record for someone squandering a electoral victory. Even Jimmy Carter had three years before people got fed up with him.
March 8, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Everything happens faster now, though. Carter didn’t have to deal with internet and sites like HB, who find things out as fast as they happen.
March 9, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Carter was funded by David Rockefeler. Just like Dr. Utopia
March 9, 2010 at 1:07 am
But isn’t the jig kind of up now? Hasn’t it become obvious (at least to some, if not a majority yet) what the Progressive Dems endgame is? The redistribution of wealth, end of our captialist system, and massive control over every aspect of ourlives.
Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t understand the end game until this year.
How do you win back the people’s trust after that? They’ve been exposed. Just like global warming, the cat’s out of the bag.
March 9, 2010 at 2:07 pm
the time frame for Carter I thought was less than the 3 years. The Iran thing in particular brought him down.
He almost destroyed the US economy, which was the intention of his backers of the Trilateral Commission.
March 8, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Here’s the thing I do not think the Dems have thought through. Are they so stupid they can’t see that IF they vote for this MONSTROSITY, they and THEIR CHILDREN will be banned FOREVER from polite society?
Do they not remember BEN NELSON being booed out of a restaurant? Do they not remember OJ SIMPSON being asked to leave because people were so upset? Do they just not GET THIS???
They are so insulated they do not understand that WE WILL NOT FORGET, even when they are out of office, at home trying to enjoy a quiet meal at a restaurant.
THIS IS FOREVER!
They need to understand that their selfish little lives will be forever CHANGED!!!
http://tinyurl.com/yl9vdyn
March 8, 2010 at 11:59 pm
It won’t matter to them. From what I hear, if this bill passes it somehow pretty much guarantees the dems will have control forever. I don’t remember how the argument went on it now, but it made sense when I read it. Maybe someone can look it up for us. This bill somehow hands America over to the dems if it passes and isn’t overturned. The problem is, of course, that the only way it can be overturned is by having enough votes in both houses to overturn the sure Obama veto rescinding the bill.
March 9, 2010 at 12:33 am
That’s it exactly. Once the Health Care legislation gets signed into law, it will lock in power and influence for statists like the current Dems and relegate conservatives to the sidelines. The SEIU will experience a massive influx of unionized health care workers and their mandatory dues. The ability to appoint cronies to positions in the new health care bureaucracy will provide leverage to the party leaders. Federalism will be overrun by power centralized in DC.
March 8, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Wahat will happen to Dem party?
Will evolve into a far left party — kicking out moderates. They should rename themselves the Socialist, Marxist, or Communist party. . .or maybe the Obamunist Party?
Moderate dems may eventually take back their party with different leadership gaining back control. . .depends on what happens with Utopia SUCH AS–1)Stay in WH 2)Get caught over-reaching and impeached 3)Step down for health reasons and start working on his International goals etc, etc
March 9, 2010 at 2:10 pm
These Communists infiltrated the Dem Party in the 1960s and onwards.
Mind there were always some communists in their ranks. FDR was certainly not good for the USA.
March 8, 2010 at 7:21 pm
O/T RE: Rahm nude fighting
Did anyone see the movie “Eastern Promises” with Viggo Mortensen? He plays a Russian mobster that actually has a nude fight scene in shower.
How about that?
March 8, 2010 at 9:11 pm
I can’t watch this now, but reading your description reminds me of that Seinfeld episode…there are some things that are just NOT attractive in the nude…I would think two men fighting might be included in that. Of course, my husband would disagree if it were two women. LOL
March 8, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Some really good points here (also links to a Mark Steyn article). If these two are correct, it won’t really matter if the Dems are infighting.
I’m not a rocket scientist and I can see a disaster coming. [Sorry to be so "down"... but stuff like this just makes me crazy...]
http://www.redstate.com/snarkandboobs/2010/03/08/government-health-care-is-not-about-health-care-its-about-government/
March 8, 2010 at 8:14 pm
[...] you look past the cracks, you see a party in chaos. The boys at HillBuzz weigh in …a Democrat Civil War is indeed raging. The Ft. Sumter event [...]
March 8, 2010 at 10:25 pm
My prediction post November–it will be the progressives who form the third party alternative. They seem angrier at times at Dems than
conservatives.
March 9, 2010 at 1:16 am
Yes they do (seem very angry at Obama/Dems). I read some of their sites regarlarly to keep up with their thinking.
However, they seem to have no awareness that they are overall, a small minority of the U.S. population. They’ll always be outnumbered. However, they are so righteous and sure of their moral superiority that they can’t see it.
As far as I’m concerned, they help our side because they split the Dems.
What’s really funny to me, is that the worst insult they can call anyone is a Republican. They rant on and on about how Obama’s a corporatist/Repub tool. Their explanation for why the Repubs aren’t aligning with him regarding votes is that they’re just “Party Of No” obstructionists.
I’ve never seen anyone on any site express the idea that conservatives could simply have a different way of seeing things.
March 8, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Obama’s security doesn’t allow press near audience at his speech today. Hmmmmm. What is Dr. U afraid they’ll say.
This from Time’s Swampland Blog, written by Time report Karen Tumulty.
————
Free the White House Press Corps
When I go to political events, I generally like to talk to people who attend them. You learn a lot that way.
Not today. I arrived at the President’s health care speech at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pa., about 45 minutes early, hoping I might chat with some of the Pennsylvanians who were here. No such luck. The press was stuck behind two sets of barriers. I tried asking several times (nicely, I promise) to wander a bit and talk to people, but was told I would have to wait until after the event. (Both the crowd and I had been through security screening.)
Okay.
So after the event, I attempted to talk to people as they left. That effort, too, was shut down by the security people.
So all I can report is this: The President gave a speech on health care this morning. People applauded and cheered. What motivated them to be here, and what bearing this issue might have on their individual lives — well, I can’t answer that.
Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/#ixzz0heByKizZ
March 8, 2010 at 11:11 pm
I am worried stupak and others will cave and the house will pass the senate bill. KEEP CALLING YOUR REPS!
March 8, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Republicans, Tea Party and Libertarians. Welcome to the fight for the country.
March 8, 2010 at 11:31 pm
Funny, funny conversation. link at bottom.
March 7, 2010
“Janeane Garofalo and an Egg Salad Sandwich”
So, why is it that you progressives seem to dislike Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?
Well, we disagree with his view of the Constitution as being a document that limits the extent to which the federal government can play a role in our everyday lives.
Interesting. Why do you suppose that we conservatives seem to dislike Barack Obama?
It’s racism, straight up. You just can’t bear the thought of a black man being the president.
Know what?
What?
You should apply for a patent on your particular brand of stupid.
http://www.parkwayreststop.com/archives/10003561
March 9, 2010 at 12:21 am
Reminiscent of Will Roger’s famous quip: “I don’t belong to any organized political party…I’m a Democrat!”
March 9, 2010 at 8:53 am
I saw a reference to Massa and Rahm Emanuel and I immediately thought of Hillbuzz and what you’ve said about Rahm. Too funny.
I think the DNC is imploding…it’s broken up into more factions than I can count. With the Republicans at least you just have a couple…the far right…and the tea partiers, and they’re just bickering over silly things.
It would not shock me if the Clintons went independent. They were stabbed in the back by so many people…and the far-left has taken over the DNC in my opinion…and I don’t think the Clintons are far left. I used to think they were…but I don’t now. I think Hillary has progressive tendencies but she wouldn’t FORCE legislation down the throat of the American people against their will. The Clintons would respect the wish of the people.
Obama does not give a rat’s ass about the American people. He is only concerned with what his people tell him. He is basically being made a fool and will crash and burn worse than Carter. And when we throw his socialist butt out of office will we be rid of him??? NO! I think he’s going to be far more dangerous AFTER his presidency…and he and Van Jones ride off in the sunset together.
That said…Mitt Romney. I know you’re not all that keen on Romney HB but I like him and I think he has a very solid power base that will take him all the way. I love SP but she’s just getting started…it’s too soon. INO of course.
March 9, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Mitt Romney has the power base, but people do not like him…. In the Bible belt for example he is viewed with suspicion. Whether or not it is right, people are averse because he is a Mormon.
March 9, 2010 at 3:06 pm
HillBuzz says: “Bonus question: after the major losses Dems will suffer in November, what do you think happens next for the party?”
Mike M says: “This is why I think the result of this is the demise of the Democrat Party.”
This depends on what the opposition does. To the extent that the Republicans, Tea Party types, and other opponents agree to terms and engage the Dems AS ONE then the D party will be damaged. Perhaps very much so.
The Republicans lost this last election because their efforts at winning were so incredibly feeble. And Bush should never have fired his PR department.
But remember, people have been predicting the demise of the Democrat party for years and they always come back stronger and farther left. Feeble Republican opposition does nothing but help them.
As the opposition fractures and fails to take advantage of this golden opportunity, well, there won’t be a whole lot of damage to the D’s.
Would I love to see a a massive slaughter of the Democrats (and a total repudiation of their policies?) Hell yes.
Do I think the Republicans have “gotten the message?” No, not yet. A few, but not “the party.”
Now, if we could only get the SarahCuda to more strongly support (fiscally) libertarian/conservative candidates then my belief in HER “Hope and Change” would be greater. As it is, she still rocks.
And while Mrs. C. is way to liberal for my tastes (didn’t she, and Mr. C., say something like, “The Gov knows how to spend our money better than WE do?”) your remarks about some of her core beliefs (nat. security, etc.) make me admit that she’d be far superior to Dr. U., Carter, and maybe even Mr. C.
March 9, 2010 at 6:22 pm
[...] and “Because I’m the President” Pundit & Pundette, Obamacare Plot Twists HillBuzz: Question: Is the Democrat Party balkanizing into all out war on multiple destructive fronts? Human Events, Emanuel Helping Obama Unravel Michelle Malkin: The Chicago Way: Judgeships for [...]
March 9, 2010 at 6:24 pm
[...] Ration Mail Delivery: Welcome to a Glimpse of Your Possible Government Health Care Future HillBuzz: Question: Is the Democrat Party balkanizing into all out war on multiple destructive fronts? Gateway Pundit: Obama Flashback: Dems Should Not Pass Healthcare With 50-Plus-1 Strategy (Video) [...]
March 10, 2010 at 12:43 am
National Intelligence Estimate 15-90
“Yugoslavia Transformed”
18 October 1990
http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_GIF_declass_support/yugoslavia/Pub34_NIE_15-90.pdf
Srđa Popović:
The Break-Up of Yugoslavia
Peščanik (Belgrade), 23 September 2008
https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AevnAZEI5La7ZGMybThwNjJfMzQ2Zno4d3BnY24&hl=fr
March 10, 2010 at 5:55 am
[...] and “Because I’m the President” Pundit & Pundette, Obamacare Plot Twists HillBuzz: Question: Is the Democrat Party balkanizing into all out war on multiple destructive fronts? Human Events, Emanuel Helping Obama Unravel Conservative Girl With a Voice: Hypocrisy in America [...]
March 10, 2010 at 12:51 pm
I was thinking about this last night after dinner … the liberal left “progressives” are using the Democrat party like a virus infects an otherwise healthy cell. Only, in this case the cell wasn’t really healthy to start which is how it was weakened to the point of allowing the invader to take over like an untreatable disease. The democrat party is now like a virus in this country … am I betraying my love of all things microbiological with this?
March 10, 2010 at 4:08 pm
[...] and “Because I’m the President” Pundit & Pundette, Obamacare Plot Twists HillBuzz: Question: Is the Democrat Party balkanizing into all out war on multiple destructive fronts? Human Events, Emanuel Helping Obama Unravel Conservative Girl With a Voice: Hypocrisy in America [...]
March 11, 2010 at 10:38 am
[...] Pontifications: Pelosi Logic and Democrats’ Newest Strategy: “Chicken!” HillBuzz: Question: Is the Democrat Party balkanizing into all out war on multiple destructive fronts? Human Events, Emanuel Helping Obama Unravel Conservative Girl With a Voice: Hypocrisy in America [...]
March 11, 2010 at 11:10 am
[...] Pontifications: Pelosi Logic and Democrats’ Newest Strategy: “Chicken!” HillBuzz: Question: Is the Democrat Party balkanizing into all out war on multiple destructive fronts? Gateway Pundit: Rep. Paul Ryan: “This Bill Is More About Ideology Than Health Care Policy” [...]