Politics From the Dark Side

 

I came across a fascinating article in The Telegraph yesterday which cited Britain’s most recent census figures; these show that almost 180,000 people in the UK identify themselves as “Jedi Knights” (from the Star Wars films), making this the most popular faith in the “Other Religions” category on the Census and the seventh most popular “religion” overall.

 

I’m not going to use this as an opportunity to beat up on the Brits for how far they’ve fallen culturally; in fact, it served to remind me of an analogy that sprang to mind with regard to the Star Wars phenomenon and America.

 

This one might even be more humiliating than the British Jedi Knights story, in fact…

 

In the second three-film installment of the Star Wars franchise (this would be the one that actually took place before the original three-film installment in the characters’ chronology), all of the evil being perpetrated (which leads up to the establishment of the Empire and subsequent rebellion from the first installment, if you’re still following) is of course being brought about by the mysterious dark Sith lord and his surrogates. In the last film (of the second installment), if the viewer hasn’t figured it out by then, we discover that the aforementioned dark lord is none other than Palpatine, the Republic’s trusted and beloved senior senator, who, throughout the series, had ostensibly been working with the Jedi protagonists.

 

Does any of this sound familiar?

 

via Politics From the Dark Side
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Morning Bell: Welfare Spending Hitting the $1 Trillion Mark

It’s been a pretty big year for welfare—and a new report shows welfare is bigger than ever.

The Obama Administration turned a giant spotlight on the welfare system in July when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proclaimed it had the authority to gut the work requirements from the welfare reform that had helped lift so many people out of poverty after 1996.

This morning, a new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) shows the staggering reality of the growing welfare state—echoing Heritage’s own research that reveals welfare spending is approaching the $1 trillion mark.

via Morning Bell: Welfare Spending Hitting the $1 Trillion Mark.

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For Our Country | Maggie’s Notebook

From: John Porter

To: Americans everywhere

I was sitting at my keyboard halfway through my writing a letter to you about how Barack Obama was fulfilling his pledge to “Transform America” by “Changing the fundamentals of America”, so that our government would become the plantation, he the owner, and we the slaves, when this article by Steve McCann appeared in my in box. After checking it for accuracy, and finding it so, I put my writing on hold and here present it to you, for I could not say it better.

…Is it already too late?

Obama’s Second Term Transformation Plans

The 2012 election has often been described as the most pivotal since 1860. This statement is not hyperbole. If Barack Obama is re-elected the United States will never be the same, nor will it be able to re-capture its once lofty status as the most dominant nation in the history of mankind.

The overwhelming majority of Americans do not understand that Obama’s first term was dedicated to putting in place executive power to enable him and the administration to fulfill the campaign promise of “transforming America ” in his second term regardless of which political party controls Congress. That is why his re-election team is virtually ignoring the plight of incumbent or prospective Democratic Party office holders.

The most significant accomplishment of Obama’s first term is to make Congress irrelevant. Under the myopic and blindly loyal leadership of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats have succeeded in creating an imperial and, in a second term, a potential dictatorial presidency.

During the first two years of the Obama administration when the Democrats overwhelmingly controlled both Houses of Congress and the media was in an Obama-worshiping stupor, a myriad of laws were passed and actions taken which transferred virtually unlimited power to the executive branch.

via For Our Country | Maggie’s Notebook.

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The Ghost of Bertold Brecht and the Balkanization of America

Bertold Brecht’s name is now largely lost to history, but the idea expressed in the succinct question above remains as potent today as when he uttered it. Brecht, a self-made Marxist who was once investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during the “Red Scare” era of the late 1940s and early 1950s, probably did not know a then-young Edward Kennedy or the other politicians who later devised the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, and he did not live to see the eventual mass migration of immigrants, legal and illegal alike, into the U.S. after his death. We can only speculate on how Brecht would have viewed the rapidly-Balkanizing United States of the early 21st century, but it seems safe to conclude that the old Marxist would be astounded at its scope, scale and rapidity.

via Family Security Matters.

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Holder to brief black pastors on campaign 2012 | Campaign 2012 | Washington Examiner

Abuse of power 101…

Attorney General Eric Holder, the IRS, and the liberal lawyers at the ACLU will brief several hundred pastors in the African American community on how to participate in the presidential election — which the Congressional Black Caucus chair expects will help President Obama’s campaign.

“We will have representatives from nine denominations who actually pastor somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10 million people, and we’re going to first of all equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they cannot say in the church that would violate their 501c3 status with the IRS,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., told MSNBC today.

“In fact, we’re going to have the IRS administrator there, we’re going to have the Attorney General Eric Holder there, we’re going to have the lawyers’ organization from around the country, the ACLU — all giving ministers guidance about what they can and cannot do,” he noted.

Holder to brief black pastors on campaign 2012 | Campaign 2012 | Washington Examiner.

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