Obama and His Radical Czars

I was going through conversations the other night when someone, I forget who, posted a video that they wanted all of us to watch. I watched, and was enraged immediately. The video was basically talking about how one of these new czars was espousing the idea of fining bloggers for writing things that were negative about the government. I had to do a little research, but I knew I would be writing an article about any jerk-off who thinks that THAT is an OK thing to do. I was going to stick to that topic, but then in Tuesday’s comments, I was challenged by Ray, who didn’t believe that the czars being appointed by Obama were all that radical. He demanded proof. I then decided that tonight would be dedicated to all the czars, and the radical pasts they have. Because make no bones about it, Barack Obama has surrounded himself with perhaps the most radical group of advisors in the history of the Presidency. I thought I could write about these jokers in one night. I realized I was wrong. There was simply too much to write. So it had to get pushed to tonight instead of last night. And for the record, the logo to the left is the logo for the Radical Social Democratic Party.

Before you condemn the Amount of them, Remember that GWB had a ton of them too.

You know, during the Presidential campaign last year, there was a lot of talk coming from the folks like Hannity and Limbaugh about the radical associations that the President has had. I dismissed a lot of what was said because I thought to myself: First, this is Hannity and Limbaugh we are talking about here. They are staunch conservatives who have been known to stretch the truth a bit. Second, Obama was running a campaign that didn’t sound radical. I was willing to wait and see before I started saying that he was also radical in his agenda or his thoughts. After all, a man can change. The national stage and the office of the President has the ability to humble a man and make him realize a lot of his campaign rhetoric will never be anything more than a pipe dream in today’s Washington DC. I now realize I was wrong to dismiss the radical affiliations of the President.

Prior to the election we were told about his radical affiliations. For example, Obama’s first political mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, an avowed Communist. There was plenty said about Bill Ayers, the domestic terrorist, who helped start Obama’s political career. And the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor of 20 years, who is about as much a race-baiting predator as I have seen. We were shown the quotes from the President where he discussed being surrounded by and mentored by Marxists. We were expressly forbidden from seeing the papers and opinions he espoused as a college student during those times. The fact is that he has a past filled with radical affiliations. There is no disputing that fact. Thanks to the power of the internet the truth was out there. Yet it was ignored. People said that the past was the past, and agreed to move forward (unless of course you are a CIA interrogator or a member of the Bush administration, which I agree was bad). But now we are seeing the Presidency unfold, and we are finding radical appointees that mirror the associations of the past.

I will finish with Van Jones, who is perhaps the worst of the appointments thus far. Allow me to start with Mark Lloyd. Mr. Lloyd was appointed as the “Diversity Czar” at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Mr. Lloyd comes to us from the Center for American Progress, where he was a Senior Fellow. The group was founded in 2003 as an answer to conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. One of their biggest funding sources would be none other than George Soros. The center has published several works decrying the unbalanced diversity of talk radio, such as the 2007 report, “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.” (which was nothing more than cherry picked stats for the record, and which claimed that the problem was that white station owners were adhering to conservative platforms, rather than their wallets). That 2007 piece had several authors. Lloyd was one of them. The very liberal Center for American Progress has several members appointed to influential positions in the Obama administration, leading some to claim that they are the most influential group in DC right now.

Mr Lloyd is one of those appointments, and is not ashamed to spout off at the mouth and express his extreme far left views. We had the pleasure of hearing him discuss one of his heroes, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez (who shut down all media outlets that offered opposing views to his own, FTR) at a 2008 conference on “media reform.” He spoke of Chavez’s “incredible revolution, a democratic revolution,” and of the “property owners and the folks who then controlled the media in Venezuela” who “rebelled and who worked to oust him.” Still, said Lloyd, Chavez “came back with another revolution, and then … began to take very seriously the media in his country.” In fact dear readers, he took them so seriously he shut down every single opposition voice in the country. Bravo, Mr. Lloyd, you picked a real gem of a guy to embrace the actions of.

Lloyd will not bring back the fairness doctrine. He will do an end around. In 2006 while at the liberal Center for American Progress Lloyd wrote a book entitled, Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America. In the book he espouses the idea the private broadcasters should pay a licensing fees which equals their total operating costs so that public broadcasting station can spend the same on their operations as the private companies do. Did you get that, he wants to charge a licensing fee on private companies EQUAL to their operating costs. Lloyd wants not only to redistribute private profits, he wants to “regulate” much of the programming on these stations to make sure they focus on “diverse views” (Progressive Views). As part of this regulation, he is going to institute local community boards to monitor the content of radio stations. Wanna guess who will control those boards and who will be pressuring them?

The “Diversity Czar” does not believe in the 1st Amendment. Quite the contrary. He has written several anti-free speech papers and articles. In that same book, he stated, “the whole free speech thing is at any rate a bit of a fraud meant to serve global corporations and obstruct policies of the kind our society needs.” Think about that for a moment. The new diversity czar thinks that the whole free speech thing is a fraud, and that it gets in the way “what society needs.” That is an odd thought, isn’t it. The first amendment is a fraud. It seems he is not interested in the people figuring out what they want, he has already decided that those smart folks in Washington DC will tell us what we need.

Next a quick look at someone who isn’t a “Czar”, but who was appointed to a very high profile position. From 1998 to 2001, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in the Bill Clinton administration. The powerful position of high-ranking legal adviser to the State Department was bestowed upon Harold Koh, former dean of the Law School at Yale University. Mr. Koh is a big proponent of transnationalism, which is a mindset that favors a “global governance” as opposed to the constitutional sovereignty of independent nation-states. He has espoused the belief that the United States should defer to International Treaties, even if we have not signed them or do not agree with them, when he stated that the solution to large world problems is that “all members of the international community should recognize a set of supranational laws and institutions whose authority overrides that of any particular government.” (UNDER REVIEW as Ray found some conflicting data as to whether this was actually said by Koh or someone else)

You read that correctly. Koh believes that the norms in the rest of the world should override the laws of the United States. His view is that the rest of the world should override the laws established in the United States. I wonder if he feels that it would be OK for us to impose the rest of the world’s view of marriage on to the Muslim communities? Because he certainly thinks their views hold valid reasoning that would have us deferring to them. He has said that the US courts, because of the transnationalism view, should defer to Sharia law in cases where necessary. He said, “in an appropriate case, I don’t see any reason why sharia law would not be applied to govern a case in the United States.” Doesn’t sound exactly like the kind of guy we want being the top legal advisor to the State Department, where they are charged with maintaining the sovereignty of the United States. The scariest part, the rumor is that Ko would be on the list of possible appointees to the Supreme Court should another vacancy open up during Obama’s Presidency. I hold no fear that he would get through a public confirmation hearing with views like these, though. But for now, he is the top legal advisor to the US State Department.

John Holdren

Next we have new “Science Czar” John Holdren. In 1977, Holdren co-wrote a textbook with environmental activists Paul and Anne Ehrlich, “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment.” The three authors summed up their guiding principle by saying, “To provide a high quality of life for all, there must be fewer people.” In order to achieve such, the three discuss totalitarian methods in order to control the population. Those methods offered as suggestion included forcing single women to abort their babies or put them up for adoption; implanting sterilizing capsules in people when they reach puberty; and spiking water reserves and staple foods with a chemical that would make people sterile. Hmmm, that sure doesn’t sound like America. Holdren’s people deny that he advocated for such a thing, and the textbook supports Holdren’s claim. However Holdren does offer in the book that the Constitution supports the idea of forced abortion if necessary.

The text also advocated how the authors felt they could best achieve this utopia of population control and resource management. They formulate a “world government scheme” they call the Planetary Regime, which  would administer the world’s resources and human growth, and they discuss the development of an “armed international organization, a global analogue of a police force” to which nations would surrender part of their sovereignty (From Fox News). Interesting, yet another appointment that feels that the sovereignty of the nation should be sacrificed to the international community.

The Fox News article also discussed that now his greatest focus is global warming, which he said in a recent interview poses a threat akin to being “in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog.” Holdren told the Associated Press in April that the U.S. will consider all options to veer away from that cliff, including an experimental scheme to shoot pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays and cool the earth, a last resort he hoped could be averted (if not perhaps he can couple it with Bill Gates plan to use water pumps to stop hurricanes). Holdren has long been a global warming fanatic, who in 1986 made the prediction that global warming would kill 1 billion people by the year 2020. He has a fair list of doomsday predictions that never came true. Yet he is now the top science advisor to the President of the United States.

I would like to present prosecution evidence item D, Cass Sunstein. Sunstein is one of my personal favorites. He has advocated a “Fairness Doctrine” for the Internet that would require opposing opinions be linked and also has suggested “angry e-mails” should be prevented from being sent by technology that would require a 24-hour cooling off period (or as I see it a 24 hour period for government to make sure that nothing gets sent that they don’t want sent). How would that work? A system that recognizes “angry” words? How long before Obama becomes an “angry” word that requires a 24 hour cooling period and some “review”? A fairness doctrine for the internet? What kind of bullshit is that? So if I want to write an article that is critical of the administration, I have to first find someone deranged enough to disagree with me? (That was a joke). He has written that the internet is “undemocratic” because internet users can filter out information they don’t want to see.

“A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government,” he wrote. “Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom’s name.” Again we hear an appointee talking about how we need to not let a silly little thing like freedom of speech interfere with “what’s best for us.” Sunstein has advocated everything from regulating the content of personal e-mail communications, to forcing nonprofit groups to publish information on their websites that is counter to their beliefs and mission. The patterns among these folks are really interesting, a lack of respect for freedom of speech, a feeling that a large international government controlling sovereign states is the way to go. If one fruitball says it, he is a fruitball, but when it starts to become a theme among administration appointees, that is troublesome.

Sunstein is also an animal fanatic, and a very large enemy to the 2nd Amendment. In a 2007 speech at Harvard, Sunstein called for a ban on hunting in the United States. He also advocated in his book that animals should have the right to bring suit against humans, with other humans taking the action for them. In his book “Radicals in Robes,” he wrote: “Almost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine. And if the Court is right, then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms.” Some fairly radical positions to take I would have to say.

But my favorite is the one that was offered the other night. In his book titled “Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech,” Sunstein noted that he is concerned about the present dilemna “in which like-minded people speak or listen mostly to one another,” and thinks that in “light of astonishing economic and technological changes, we must doubt whether, as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving democratic goals.” As a result of free speech being undemocratic, he wants to broaden laws in order to levy fines on those who post articles on the internet (such as yours truly) and hold them accountable for even what their commenters post (I am not going to jail for you jokers). Add into this the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act (HR 1966) offered by California Democrat Linda Sanchez and about a dozen co-sponsors. It proposes a quite vague “up to two years in prison for those whose electronic speech is meant to ‘coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress.” Think that vagueness has the potential for abuse?

Sunstein is no small player in all of the areas of government. He is not limited in the way some of the other czars are. He is the Regulatory Chief. That means that he can influence nearly every aspect of the government, from health care to climate change to communications to bailouts. Not real comforting to find that the person with that much power in this administration simply doesn’t believe in freedom. He believes we aren’t smart enough to do things ourselves.

As my last offering of a Czar tonight, I give you the apple of my eye, the one and only Van Jones. The Green Jobs Czar. A special advisor to the President. An avowed communist. Oh, he has been making the news lately. It started the other day with the fact that when he was asked why Democrats don’t use their overwhelming power in Congress to force things, he replied about Republicans, “They’re assholes. And Barack Obama is not an asshole. Now I can be an asshole. Some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama need to get a little uppity”. WOW, there is that bipartisanship Obama promised us. He apologized for the statement (only because it was on tape and could not be denied). Then today it is revealed that he is a 9/11 “Truther” ( I certainly hope you are as harsh on these folks as you are on the “birthers”, you on the left). Jones joined the “9/11 truther” movement by signing a statement in 2004 calling for then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others to launch an investigation into evidence that suggests “people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

I love the Corrupt Cops Sign Behind him... Fitting

Jones is an avowed communist. He did name his son after a militant marxist guerilla. And he made the following statement about how he arrived at being a communist: “In jail I met all of these young radical people of color. I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And I was like ‘this is what I need to be a part of.’ I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary. I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28, and the verdicts came down on April 29. By August 1 I was a communist.” He was referecing the Rodney King verdicts. You see Jones is also a person who sees every issue through the tinge of a hate for white America.

In March of this year, Jones gave a speech in at the Powershift ’09 convention. In that speech he repeatedly said “We’re gonna take out the whole system” and went on to discuss how white America forced and pushed and bullied native Americans to the worst hot and windy lands, and that now we would be justly be paid back with the Native Americans getting all the green benefits on those lands. He ended that tirade screaming “No more broken treaties. No more broken treaties. Give them the wealth! Give them the wealth! No Justice on Stolen Land! We Owe them a debt!” He also in that same speech stated that “We are going to Change the entire system”. This included addressing how we “consume water”, how we “treat our brother and sister species”, how we “deal with toxins”, deal with “the way we treat each other”. He clearly discusses social change as the goal of his movement. And given his dislike for White people, that is scary.

He has talked about the need for reparations. He has talked about the need for social justice. He discussed how our immigrant brothers and sisters are out doing the jobs we don’t want to do while having poison is being spread on them. He exclaimed that we refuse to give them rights and dignity. He is the same man who made the statement in an interview that, “The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering the poisons into the people of color communities.” This is a man, who on September 12, 2001, the day after the 9/11 attacks, issued a statement expressing “solidarity with our Arab and Muslim Americans as well as the victims of American Imperialism around the world.”

Jones was also a member of the group STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, a group explicitly committed to revolutionary Marxist politics, whose points of unity were revolutionary democracy, revolutionary feminism, revolutionary internationalism, the central role of the working class, urban Marxism, and Third World Communism).  And before you simply throw all this away as mistakes of the past. Before you simply blow this off and say that a man can change. I leave you with the words of a radical who has now appeared to change into a great guy who is good for America. Jones, in 2005, just before becoming such a “good guy”, made the statement, “I am willing to forego the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends.” So has he changed the deeply radical beliefs that he has been holding? Or has he simply eliminated the “pose” in order to get to those same “radical ends”? And the new audio about how pursuing minimum goals is the way to go to take steps towards fundamental change enlightens us all to how radical he wants to use the green movement to “transform the whole society.”

Folks we have to remember that the President said “If you want to know what my policies are you need to look to the personnel I surround myself with”. And what I am seeing here is the surrounding of the President of a group of radical folks. Some are communists. Some think freedom of speech gets in the way. Some think the internet offering so much personalization to ones desired viewing is dangerous. Some feel that we should defer our sovereignty to some sort of one world government. And it seems like they all are looking to fundamentally change the United States of America. I suppose that this is the REAL Hope and Change this country voted for.

The President is not a dumb man. And he is not someone who makes appointments like these lightly. You can be sure that every single one of those people put into cabinet positions and appointed to czar positions were well vetted. The President knew what these people were about. And he brought them in anyway. The President, knowing the objectives these men espouse, would not have put them in a position of power that would enable them to meet those objectives unless he also believed those objectives were good. And he has continued to leave them in place despite all of this information coming out.

This article is not an attack on the left, because this is not about the left or right, Democrats or Republicans. It is about an attack on the fundamental essence of this country. When you couple this with the health care reform, bailouts, directives, and all the other things that we have been discussing here, when do we simply say “OK. We have enough evidence that he is not what we thought we were voting for,”? Those of you on the left. The ones who do still support this President, that do still believe he is what he campaigned as being. How much are you willing to ignore? Is there anything that will change your mind to believing that this man has bad intentions for the country? It didn’t take me long to realize what George Bush was and I denounced him as such. We need to wake up. This man is far more dangerous to the United States of America that we all know and love than George Bush ever was.