The History of Amerika’s Cartoon Government (part 2) (by ContraSuggest)

In part one of this series, we laid out much of the how, where, why, and when the corrupt Amerikan political system came into existence; how it persists in an even more dangerous form to this day, and how it has resulted in the wholesale destruction of the constitutional system created by the Founders.  Here in part two, we’re going to concentrate on the shape of modern-day political corruption in our state governments, specifically in New York State, where crooked, machine politics was practically invented.

It’s important here to understand the seductive and all-consuming nature of Amerikan political corruption.  Undoubtedly, from time to time there are some truly good men and women who decide to run for public office because they want to effect positive change.  Many of them eschew constitutional principles simply because they do not understand the constitutional system put in place by the Founders, nor do they care to. If that weren’t tragic enough, most soon discover the need to solicit lots of campaign cash from various special interests, and to make lots of campaign promises that are called-in once they’re in office.  If elected, legislators find it necessary to almost immediately start running for reelection; begin lavishing patronage jobs on friends and family members, possibly with good intentions (like trying to help friends or relatives who are out of work). Unfortunately, this practice precludes them from criticizing similar practices by other legislators, thus propagating a crooked system.  The need for electoral support and ever more campaign cash makes it difficult not to cave-in to special interest demands, like those of the public employee unions, who fill legislators’ campaign coffers with cash.  The crack-like addiction makes ‘going along to get along’ much easier than standing up against the forces of corruption.  As illustrated in part one, the New York (City and State) of the 1820s was the birthplace of the political instrumentalities and much of the “innovations” that accelerated the nation’s path toward wide-spread institutionalized corruption.  In the early 21^st century, New York is still the poster child for all that is destructive in American politics.    

Let’s consider how the surrender of New York State’s politicians to special interest pressures has nearly bankrupted the state, and overburdened citizens with crippling taxation and regulation.  Corruption in the funding of public programs has led the state to the brink of fiscal insolvency.  For the sake of brevity, we will concentrate on one notable area where financial corruption flourishes: New York State’s bloated Medicaid program.  The Medicaid program, mandated by the Feds and inaugurated in New York in 1966, was the brainchild of uber-liberal Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller.  Rockefeller was, in today’s vernacular, a RINO, who made a career of out-pandering liberal Democrats, and purposefully designed Medicaid to offer lavish medical benefits to the “poor”, while raking in the maximum amount of Federal matching funds (funding was to be shared in a 50-50 Fed/State split).  New York’s Medicaid bill was quickly pushed through the legislature with almost no real consideration or public review; amendments were recklessly added by legislators, one of which mandated that Albany would pick up only half of the state’s portion of Medicaid costs; the rest of the financial burden was pushed onto the local governments.  This assured that the program would be an unmitigated fiscal disaster from day one, and it got progressively worse as time wore on.  Today, the average NY county devotes more than half of its county taxes just to covering its state-imposed share of Medicaid costs. 

Medicaid benefits are controlled by city and county officials who, for many years, have used them as patronage.  The legislature in Albany continually turn a blind eye to the runaway costs of Medicaid, and the massive deficits that it creates, because they look at it as just another constituency service.  Hundreds of thousands of health-care workers (represented by their powerful unions), health-care providers, and those receiving medical and nursing home benefits, are bestowed with Medicaid dollars in return for campaign cash and votes on Election Day.  In New York City hospitals, for instance, local politicians exercise wide control over everything from supervisory appointments down to which departments will receive funding and which ones won’t.  In a criminally dysfunctional atmosphere like this, where Medicaid services are doled out as political rewards by apparatchiks of the inner city politburo, Medicaid costs have, and will continue to spiral out of control, and consume ever-increasing portions of state and local government budgets.

The twisted morass of corruption and mismanagement is dizzying; consider the following:  New York State’s Medicaid budget is far bigger than California’s, a state which has over twice the population of NY.  Fraud runs rampant in the system (estimated to be in the double-digit billions), yet the Medicaid budget balloons every year (spending tripled between the 1980s and the early 2000s), while the fraud investigation unit gets smaller and smaller.  Despite a huge oversupply of state hospital beds, the powerful 1199 Healthcare Workers Union has continually blocked any cuts that would eliminate surplus jobs or hospitals.  Thanks to the mismanagement of Medicaid, New York State is hemorrhaging money, continually increasing taxes and regulations, going deeper and deeper into crippling debt, while doctor reimbursements continue to be reduced, and health care choices for the truly poor become more and more restricted.       

A complete list of New York’s Cartoon Government abuses would run far too long to include here; unfortunately the state’s Medicaid debacle is emblematic of how most government programs are run in the Empire State.  Education is another fraudulent cesspool of back-room deals and budget busting corruption.  These abuses are very much part of the crooked political culture in other states like New Jersey, California, Michigan, Illinois, and many others.  Our national woes will continue until these abuses are at least greatly curtailed; the first step to fixing our system is to identify the problems, which is what I am attempting to do with this series of posts.  Stay tuned for part 3.

Ten Solid Reasons Not To Vote for Hillary Clinton (Her Life of Lies, Scandal and Demagoguery) by ContraSuggest

With the exception of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton is the politician whose popularity most astounds me.  I understand that a certain percentage of her backers are leftist political zombies who will support high-profile, self described “progressive” politicians no matter what.  But what’s the excuse for the rest of her supporters?  A strong case can be made that Hillary is nothing more than a pandering, unqualified political phony of the highest order.  After years of examining the woman’s public life, her education and career, it’s still hard to conclude exactly what she believes and why she believes it.  Are her politics more the product of empty career-advancing pragmatism, or hard core leftist convictions?  Not to mention that her resume and accomplishments are weak, relative to the trust that her libtard supporters place in her.  If her candidacy for president hadn’t been derailed by the Obama juggernaut during the 2008 Democrat Party primary, she would most certainly have been elected president. 

Most recently the Democrat Party’s propaganda arm (aka the New York Times) published a 7,500 word report on the Benghazi affair designed to absolve then Secretary of State Hillary of any wrongdoing in the Sept. 11, 2012 disaster.  It’s looking increasingly likely that she will capture the 2016 Democrat nomination for president, should she decide to run.  Given America’s current dim-witted and toxic socio-political zeitgeist, I seriously doubt there’s a Republican out there who can take her; so there’s a damn good chance we’d better get used to eight years of “Madame President.”  So why are most people in this country poised to vote for this empty pantsuit who fashions herself a “progressive”, after eight years of the wholesale destruction visited on the nation by progressivism under Oba Mao?  Well to be honest, I have no idea, and I’m through trying to diagnose the collective mental illness of the American electorate.  But through a quick review of Shillary’s career, I now offer ten solid reasons why electing her president is a monumentally stupid idea (there are hundreds of reasons, of course, but I distilled it down to 10 for the sake of brevity).  

1. The Anti-American Flower Child.  Hillary is firmly a child of the radical, counter-cultural 1960s, in whose fires her ideology was forged.  In the late 60s she attended Wellesley College, where her senior honor’s thesis was dedicated to the application of the theories of Saul Alinsky.  No one would argue that Alinsky is a far-left radical; his infamous, seminal book, Rules for Radicals, teaches how to use lies and distortions to discredit political enemies.  His theories have influenced a multitude of self-styled “community organizers” (aka. shit-stirers), from Ralph Nader to Jesse Jackson.  Hillary’s thesis was withheld from the public until the Clinton’s left the White House in 2001.

2. Hillary, Defender of Scum.  After graduating, Hillary moved on to Yale Law where she aided in the legal defense of Black Panther Party members accused of murder.  For those who don’t know, the Panthers were/are a militant Black Power organization founded in the 1960s by the radical racist murderer Huey Newton and his cohorts, that advocated the overthrow of the US government.  Newton proclaimed: “we make the statement, quoting from Chairman Mao, that Political Power comes through the Barrel of a Gun.”

3. Corporate Cowboy AND Defender of the Little Guy?  Over the years Hillary has benefitted greatly, both financially and politically, from her cozy relationship with the Wal-Mart Corporation.  She served as corporate council on the company’s board of directors; the company provided and paid for all of the Clinton's air travel during the 1992 presidential campaign; just prior to running for president, Hillary held thousands of shares of Wal-Mart stock; when she wrote her book “Living History,” it was marketed through Wal-Mart, and she visited Wal-Mart stores all over the country to do book signings. It’s no secret that Wal-Mart’s policies concerning their workers’ health care coverage, salaries and anti-union efforts have often come under fire from labor unions and other leftist dimwits, but nary a peep from Hillary.  The self-proclaimed crusader for the little guy, union advocate, and champion of a higher minimum wage has been largely silent about Wal-Mart’s “anti-worker” policies.  Despite these facts she has always shared enthusiastic union support and endorsements, along with support from Wal-Mart.  Politics certainly makes for strange bedfellows, especially when one is as big a public fraud as Hillary Clinton

4. Investment Genius?  In the late 1970s, when BJ Clinton ran for Governor of Arkansas, Hillary invested $1,000 in cattle commodities futures and, with the help of a friend who was general council for Tyson Foods, one of the state’s biggest businesses, saw that turned into $100,000, in a mere 6 months.  When questioned about how she managed this rapidly profitable investment strategy, she responded that she “read the Wall Street Journal.”  This may be ancient history, but it reeks of the corporate insider image that Hillary claims to oppose

5. Whitewater Witchery.  In the late 1980s, the Clintons invested in the Whitewater real estate project, and Hillary performed legal work for Morgan Guaranty Savings and Loan, which invested in the project and whose failure cost the Federal Government (the taxpayers) $73 million.  Whitewater later became the subject of congressional hearings and an independent council investigation, both of which were impeded when Rose Law Firm billing records were subpoenaed in July 1994, but were not found until they turned up in the residential quarters of the White House in January 1996 (hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes; put it in your pantry with your cupcakes).  Independent Council Robert Ray ended the investigation in September 2000, claiming that he could not prove that the Clintons had been involved in criminal activity, or that they concealed information from investigators, or obstructed justice.  In his final report in March 2002, Ray noted that Rose Law Firm records were found in the family quarters of the White House in January 1996 and that three witnesses told investigators that they saw her (Hillary Clinton) “carrying what had the appearance of the billing records in July 1995”; but he said that the evidence was insufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.  You be the judge

6. A Demagogue Goes to the Senate.  Toward the end of Bill Clinton’s administration, Hillary saw longtime NY senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s retirement as an opportunity to beef up her weak presidential resume.  The Clintons pulled out every stop during their final year in the White House to ingratiate themselves with New Yorkers, assigning an interest to the state and certain constituencies there, that they would not otherwise have expressed.  The failure of NY’s Republicans to run a strong candidate, the Clinton’s star power, and the impenetrable ignorance of downstate voters, combined to hand the office of senate to carpetbagger Hillary on a silver platter  

7. More Phony Baloney.  As senator, Hilary’s tired, shrill and recycled rhetoric was prone to hyperbolic fancies, describing the Bush administration’s domestic agenda as “radical,” bent on dismantling the “central pillars of progress in our country during the 20^th century” and seeking “to undo the New Deal.”  In reality, Bush presided over a wholesale expansion of the welfare state; he was responsible for ballooning the nation’s debt far beyond that of any other presidential administration up to that point in history.  Hillary showed herself to be a phony, class warfare demagogue of the basest variety

8. Old Blood and Guts.  After securing a spot on the Armed Services Committee, tough girl Senator Hillary, voted for the then politically popular Iraq use of force resolution.  For several years she defended her vote, stating that it was necessary but that we should not stay forever, yet fell short of saying we should establish a withdrawal date.  As the war drew on, the military situation deteriorated and public approval began to fall away.  Now eyeing a presidential run, Hilary had to curry favor with the anti-war left in the Democrat Party, and (SURPRISE!) changed her position strictly for political reasons.  If you need further proof of this assessment, consider this excerpt from Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ 2014 book Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War: “Hillary told the president that her opposition to the Iraq surge had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary.  …The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political.  To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.”  ‘Nuff Said!

9. Defining Hypocrisy: Hillary for President.  All through her 2008 primary campaign Hilary continuously made contradictory statements while pandering to different interest groups, and the press refused to call her on it.  I’ve already mentioned her spurious Iraq stance; her lies were legion, here are three more notable examples:    

• The New York Times released the Clinton's financials; it was revealed that Hillary made much of her money from the oil industry as she continued to demonize the oil industry.  The Clintons were heavily invested in Cisco Systems, a company that had been outsourcing jobs to India for years while she continued to demonize outsourcing, once again, pretending to be the indefatigable defender of the American worker. 
• Hillary commented to the Associated Press that President Bush could not take military action against Iran without congressional approval.  Two weeks later, she told an audience at AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) that US policy must be unequivocal, that Iran cannot develop nukes; the military option wouldn’t be taken off the table.  So she told AIPAC that, as president, she'll take out Iran's nuclear capability with military force if necessary; but she told the AP that Bush, who was weighing the same threat, couldn’t do it without congressional approval (which she knew congressional Democrats would never grant him).  So as president she pledged to do whatever it would take to prevent Iran’s nuclear capability, which Bush could not do without congressional approval
• Clinton accused Obama of giving a “wink-wink” to Canada regarding his anti-NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) rhetoric.  It was then revealed that the Clinton campaign sent a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper stating that he should take Hillary's anti-NAFTA rhetoric with a grain of salt.

10. Those Who Live In Glass Houses.  It’s inconceivable that someone who was an integral part of the scandal-ridden Clinton Administration would have the unmitigated gall to characterize the Bush administration as an example of corruption and cronyism run amok.  But that’s exactly what Hillary did.  Her husband's administration was an ethical disgrace; quantifiably far, far worse than the Bush administration.  When we heard this crap come out of her mouth we thought she must be kidding, but she was actually serious!  The Clinton Administration set some interesting records in the field of executive branch ethics, here’s a smattering:

• The most convictions and guilty pleas of friends and associates of any administration ever
• The highest number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation in history
• The most witnesses to flee the country or refuse to testify in the course of legal investigations (of the administration’s fund raising)
• The first time in history that the first lady came under criminal investigation
• The largest criminal plea agreement ever in an illegal campaign contribution case
• The first president to be held in contempt of court
• The greatest amount of  illegal campaign contributions ever on record
• The greatest amount of campaign contributions from abroad
• The first president to ever be disbarred   

Conclusion:

Hillary has always portrayed herself as a champion of the little guy; she’s “for the children,” for the “uninsured,” for the “poor,” etc.  In her own life she has always been about privilege, many of the things she’s achieved in her life have been handed to her, and in the instances where she has helped the downtrodden, one can’t help but think she’s done so only because she knew that the cameras were rolling.  Like many liberal politicians, Hillary has used taxpayer funded giveaways in exchange for public affections, and lots of votes.  I’m hard-pressed to find an unpopular policy position that Hillary has taken a stand on, and that she continued to defend in spite of its continued unpopularity.  Hillary appears to believe that it's better to be popular and wrong than unpopular and right.

The bottom line with Hillary is, what seems to be a contradictory nature, actually makes perfect sense; she's at once a far-left ideologue and a slippery, pragmatic, political phony whose leftist core beliefs are trumped only by her desire to attain political power.  She may seem to renounce her leftism when it suits her, but she always returns to form later, after she’s reaped the political benefit of her erstwhile “change.”  Consistency is irrelevant in Orwell’s America, and she knows it; she can get away with her chicanery ad infinitum.  To the small percentage of constitutional conservatives in this country, Hillary comes off as a left-leaning opportunist who lacks sincerity.  This has just as much to do with her speaking style, a disengaged, almost emotionless monotone, as with her seemingly contradictory positions.  Her behavior and her record to date indicate that, as president, she'd take a poll every 5 minutes or so and find a way to convince the public that their wishes are being served by a vast expansion of federal government power.  We know that the opposite is true, but first we have to convince Neo that the Matrix is real; a tall order indeed.

The History of Amerika’s Cartoon Government (part 1) (by ContraSuggest)

I’ve spent most of my life trying to convince people that there was an ideological difference between Democrats and Republicans; that the two major parties represented fundamentally different, competing theories on the subjects of government and culture.  On paper this is still true, but in practice it is most often not true.  By the 21^st century the lines have been so blurred between the practical application of Democratic and Republican principles that, in most cases, there is no discernable difference in the way the two parties govern.  Oh, the rhetoric often differs because the parties need to act as if they’re different; for how else could they convince you to vote for one over the other?  Unfortunately politics is all about getting elected and re-elected; unholy alliances must be forged; promises made and kept to special interests, while the ones made to the general public are most often broken.  Once in office, Remocrats and Depublicans often pursue near identical, wasteful and unconstitutional policies.  In so doing, they play right into the “they’re all crooks” stereotype; convincing an already cynical and apathetic public, that attempts to achieve honest government are simply futile.  Welcome to Cartoon Government.

So how did fundamentally sound government institutions undergo the transformation into Cartoon Government?  Well, it started a long time ago and the dynamics that brought it about are really rooted in our faulty and sinful human nature.  Ultimately, all of the blame for the current sorry state of our country can be traced back to the wholesale rejection of God, and the Amerikan culture’s denial that our secular laws come from the Judeo-Christian ethos.  There has been a simultaneous abandonment of timeless constitutional principles at all levels and branches of our government.  [For an excellent exposition on this problem and practical proposals for rectifying it, read Mark Levin’s outstanding new book The Liberty Amendments.]  Here, I plan to analyze the problem from a slightly different angle.  To answer the question about the transformation of our government institutions, we need to go back to America’s stellar beginnings and see how the theoretical was ruined by bad application. 

The American Founders distilled the most effective components from the great political

systems of history and enshrined them in a written constitution.  They dynamically balanced those elements against one another in a system of checks and balances, which provided the underpinnings of a country in which the largest number of people in all of history have been able to live in conditions of freedom and prosperity.  That is a singular historical achievement that cannot be understated. But how do these facts square with the modern-day dysfunction and catastrophic failure of a political system that was specifically designed to endure with changing times?  How did the political system in America become so hopelessly corrupt and broken?  How did so-called special interests gain so much currency in the centers of political power?  How did patronage and political quid pro quos come to characterize business as usual in our political system?

Most of the answers to these questions date back to the 1820s, to a pivotal flashpoint in our history, which has been accurately described by many historians, including Paul Johnson and Larry Schweikart.  It was a time when the modern-day, state political machine system was first created, primarily in New York State by Martin Van Buren, and then extended and expanded to the federal level.  Van Buren, one of the most successful politicians in history, held nearly every elected office in New York State and multiple offices on the federal level, culminating in the presidency (he was the 8^th president of the US).  He was the grandfather of political patronage, was responsible for the creation of the modern Democratic Party, the founder of the first state political machine (the notorious Albany Regency), and many other modern political innovations.  He saw Governor Dewitt Clinton’s spoils system (under political party control) as a way to dull the passions of the slavery issue that threatened to permanently balkanize the country.  Securing votes for party candidates by offering favors and jobs in return, was seen as an effective alternative to securing votes by taking a strong position for or against the tendentious issue of slavery.  This line of thinking cynically held that greed was a stronger motivating factor for political loyalty than the burning passions of sectional differences.  We know all too well that this system was ultimately incapable of avoiding a cataclysm over slavery, yet it left us with the corrupt cartoon government we have today.

Van Buren’s Albany Regency, run by his new Democrat Party, lavished patronage on newspapers that “shared” the party’s views, and upon loyal individuals and local organizations that would guarantee voter turnout.  The party machine was composed of operatives at every level, from local communities up to the federal echelons, each one a loyal devotee, responsible for securing votes.  Election victories were then rewarded with promotions, in which all operatives advanced up the chain until all possible job holders in the party organization were appointed to paid government positions.  The sleazy backroom deals engaged in by our state politicians today were firmly established in the 1820s by the Albany Regency; the network may have expanded, but it’s still the same old dirty game.

The corrupt system that began in earnest in the 1820s has been further codified today by those who euphemistically fashion themselves “community organizers.”  In our retrograde culture, the practice of community organizing is portrayed as morally laudable, like the search for a cancer cure; in reality it is morally equivalent to the slave trade.  The race-baiting, anti-capitalist shit-stirring and demagoguery in which these cockroaches engage has rotted away nearly all that was good and decent about this once great country.  These community organizers peddle their poisons to local communities in every part of the country, begin collectivist grass roots movements, establish seemingly innocuous local organizations designed to create loyal zombie-like voters, exercise free access to press and media outlets, run election campaigns for leftist candidates, and are imbedded like ticks in all government branches and departments.  In short, community organizers possess and regularly exercise the power to shape our culture into any twisted form their radical imaginations desire.  And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Amerika twice elected a community organizer to the presidency.

End of part one.

Socio-economics and The Catholic Church (by ContraSuggest)

Many people, including many Catholics, continue to express confusion on what the Church’s position is on socio-economic issues.  Many believe that Church teaching stands against capitalism, while expressing tolerance for such evils as socialism and communism.  I can understand the confusion.  Various popes throughout the decades have expounded on these subjects, critiquing various economic systems and situations that negatively impact Christ’s children, and so the papacy has always opposed any roadblocks to human dignity.  Since poverty is chief among these roadblocks, any system of government, economic system, or variant economic system, seen to promote paucity and exploitation has been a target for papal criticism.  No economic system is perfect, and insofar as abuses of individual dignity have occurred in capitalist systems, capitalism at times has been subject to papal censure.  This does not mean that the Church is opposed to capitalism in toto.  At the same time the Church has consistently rejected the legacy of Marx.  Consider this quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 2425:

The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modern times with “communism” or “socialism.”  She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of “capitalism,” individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor.

In the second sentence of the above passage, note the italics that I have added to accent the word “in.”  The Catechism is merely criticizing a sometimes abuse within capitalism, the brutal Darwinian notion of survival of the fittest that all Christians should deny.  Contrast this with the absolute rejection of totalitarian socialism and communism in the first sentence.  The Catechism continues:

Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for “there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market.”  Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.”

Again, rejecting centralized planning is a total rejection of communism and socialism because centralized planning is a feature only of those two systems, there is no ambiguity here.  Any government that sets itself above its citizens will ultimately set itself above God, and is thus atheistic and totalitarian.  Some people read the remainder of the passage as anti-capitalistic; I don’t believe that it is.  “Reasonable regulation of the marketplace” is something that the American Founders wouldn’t have disagreed with; after all, they created an orderly system of laws based upon human dignity and enshrined them in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.  The preamble to the Constitution talks about the new government promoting “the general welfare” by “securing the blessings of liberty.”  The Declaration talks about the inalienable natural rights of every person.  Only a closed mind could interpret the Church’s  total rejection of left-wing socio-economic ideologies, combined with criticism of Darwinian notions of survival of the fittest, and conclude they’re hearing a rejection of capitalism.  It’s my belief that the Church does not expressly embrace any one economic system because it recognizes that any system run by sinners will have abuses.  This is more a recognition of our fallen state than it is a critique of economic systems.    

What’s your opinion?  We’d like to know.

Cold War Parallels Within Obama’s America? (by ContraSuggest)

There are some obvious differences between the plight of constitutional conservatives fighting for freedom in the new USSA (Union of Socialist States of America), and those that fought for their freedoms during the Cold War in the captive Warsaw Pact nations of the USSR.  Yet there are many more notable similarities, and we can learn much in how to combat the evils of statism within our country, from studying the strategies employed by the anti-Soviet forces at the tail end of the last century. 

There is a distinction between hard tyranny (the kind imposed by the Soviets), and soft tyranny (the kind imposed by American statists, led by President Obama).  The former impute laws and rules that, above all else, require total obedience to a centralized government authority; ultimately enforceable by violent, jack-boot police and military tactics.  The latter, excluding the overt violence, cloaks itself in existing law and tradition (while at the same time violating them at every turn), offering up counterfeit panaceas; ultimately eroding our rights and freedoms through attrition.  The great danger of soft tyranny is that it will always yield to hard tyranny, unless derailed in its formative stages.  That hideous transformation is taking place right before the eyes of any American still paying attention.  That’s why it’s essential, despite our monumental setbacks that we fight against the statists at all costs.

During the dark days of the Cold War there were many notable civil protests and political movements from inside the Soviet prison house of nations that began to seriously challenge the opressive authority of the Soviet Empire.  Many of these protest movements were supported from without by the anti-Soviet strategies employed by NATO under US leadership.  The events that took place in East Germany in 1953, in Hungary (a great student protest) and Poland in 1956, the so-called Spring of Prague in Czechoslovakia in 1968 (during which time large groups of young men rose up to reform the Soviet-imposed system), and the Solidarity Movement in Poland thru the 1980s (an anti-Soviet labor movement), were watershed events in the slow death of the Soviet Empire, even though they were often answered with bloody crackdowns that tragically killed tens of thousands.  In the present day USSA we see first and second amendment violations being enshrined in law, the continued death march of abortion rights, and the continued collectivization of the economy, which are clearly the beginning of a systemic attack on our constitutional liberties that, if allowed to stand, can only end in abject tyranny.  We had all better wake up and start playing hardball now, if we do not, there will most certainly be blood in the streets in a few short years.   

Some of the former United States of America can continue to be effective incubators for movements (similar to those during the Cold War mentioned above) against Obama’s secular-socialist machine.  But we still face the same old problem: we have no leaders emerging that can effectively spearhead the fight.  The knockout blow against the Soviets during the last decade of the Cold War was delivered by Ronald Reagan, blessed Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher.  Three titans of history, who despite their relative differences, concentrated their moral authority and formidable political and rhetorical firepower against the bane of Soviet Communism.  Those three legends, and the loyal people who worked for and supported them, won the Cold War.  Where are such people now?  Not all Americans are stupid; if we properly explain the present dangers, there are those who will respond.  But who will rally them?  In too many ways the former United States have become a microcosm of the old Warsaw Pact nations; they’re becoming enslaved to the will of a malevolent central authority that is determined to erase our liberties.  America was the leader in defeating the communism that pledged to bury it; who will now save Amerika from the forces that would bury it from within?

Thought Excerpts from Inside the Head Of Paul Bardus (A Typical 21st Century Amerikan Guy) (by ContraSuggest)

Monday, 11:30 AM, Paul’s Bedroom

CNN Reporter: …new pope is Argentina's Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, who takes the name Pope Francis.  Francis, 76, is the first non-European pope in the modern era, the first South American pope and the first Pope Francis.  His election comes on the first full day of the cardinals' conclave in the Sistine Chapel.  The new pope, who succeeds Pope Benedict XVI, asked the crowd to pray for him.

Inside Paul Bardus’s Head:  Oh sh*t! What time is it?  Eleven-thirty already?  Slept through the alarm again; TV still on from last night. That had to be the best weed ever; still buzzed, head pounding though, must be the Jacks.  Back hurts; feels like a knot… oh, slept on the remote…  Hey, nice hat Francis, do you wear that because you lost a bet?  Wonder if he takes that thing off when he fondles little boys?  Sh*t, I hope Paul Jolley doesn’t get voted off of Idol.

Inside Paul’s Car, after leaving Wendy’s drive-through, 12:17 PM

Z-100 News Brief: …up to 73 weeks of total benefits is still the maximum available to unemployed workers in California. A regular claim provides up to 26 weeks of benefits and federal extension benefits provide up to another 47 weeks of benefits, provided by the federal government due to the length and severity of the economic downturn.  The White House has still not come to terms with the House of Representatives on a budget deal; the CBO now estimates the national debt to be in the $16 trillion range…

Paul’s Head: Obama is so cool, he really gets it.  F**king a**hole Republicans should stop busting his balls; mmm, fries are so good when they’re hot.  Gotta remember to call Bob about meeting his girlfriend’s friend next Saturday; can’t wait to lay into that!  We really beat the sh*t out of that rental last week, returned it after Bob puked in the trunk, and totally got away with it!  Bartender was awesome, drinks were so strong, can never remember what’s in a kamikaze, but they had some kick!  Need to find out by next month for the big ski trip.  F**k!  I’ll never get that pickle out from in between the seat and the console! 

Leaving Amanda’s house, 3:45 PM

Paul’s Head: This is really starting to piss me off, been seeing her for a week already and still haven’t nailed her.  What a pain in the balls; had to play it cool in front of her father; my God, what a tool that guy is!  Having to sit and pretend to be interested in his stupid sh*t is torture.  Your daughter is hot, but it’s not worth having to hear about what it was like when you grew up, how young people had more respect then.  Bitching about how union demands forced his company to close, and being out of work along with everybody else.  Well I’m out of work too, a**hole.  He was just breaking my balls; he knows I’m union.  My rep said he should have something for me soon, real soon.  I’m done with Amanda anyway, ain’t calling that bitch no more.              

In Front of Bob’s house, 5:05 PM

Headline, Yahoo’s home page on Paul’s I-Phone: Two teens arrested in baby shooting death.  A mom tries to shield her 13-month old son with her arms when a gunman and his young accomplice attack her.

Paul’s Head: Where the f**k is he?  Said he’s be here at 3:30; been jerking off here for 15 minutes already; not picking up his phone or answering texts; I’ll check my e-mail and see if he left anything.  Dead baby?  What the f**k?  After that Newton thing they should just get rid of all these f**king guns already, no one should be allowed to own one; at least then this sh*t will stop.  F**king rednecks and their guns, enough already!  Is that a cigarette burn on my leather?!  Sh*t, Bob is always smoking in here.  I’m gonna kick his ass, where the f**k is he anyway?  Did my phone just buzz?  Oh, it was just my stomach growling, I’m starved, where is he?!  Finally, a text!  OK, he’s late and will be here in 10 minutes, and we’re going to O’Malley’s tonight; very cool. 

Returning to Bob’s house, 3:20 AM

Evening news headlines AP, CNN, Fox, et al.: Death toll spikes in Iraq, new wave of suicide bombers kills 50 in Afghanistan, city of Detroit Bankrupt, Mexican drug cartels step-up violence on the border, Tenement fire kills 15 in the Bronx, Jerry Sandusky interview to air…       

Paul’s Head: I am so f**king drunk!  Holy sh*t, did Taylor Swift get implants?  That’s pretty cool!  After I sleep this off, me and Bob gotta talk about what we’re gonna do next month to celebrate my 30^th birthday.                     

On The Counterfactual Anti-Catholic Lies of Author Dan Brown (by ContraSuggest)

A few weeks ago, while at a Christmas party with some close friends, the subject of Dan Brown’s movies and novels came up in one of our conversations.  One friend said that she thought Brown was clever for having convinced readers and viewers that the things depicted in his movies were factual.  Another remarked that Angels and Demons wasn’t nearly as offensive to Catholics as The Davinci Code.  While strictly true, these opinions conceal the harmful effects of Brown’s foul anti-Catholic slander and malicious libel.  For no other phenomenon in our cultural milieu of filth has done more to sustain a false, hateful view of the Church than Brown’s books and movies; justifying the last respectable bigotry in Amerika: anti-Catholicism.

What exactly do Brown’s books and movies say about the Catholic Church that has me so upset?  Well here’s a sampling of some of the lies he proffers followed by brief responses to each:

Lie:

The Catholic Church has led a centuries-long and ruthless campaign against science and reason

Truth:

Church doctrine in no way contradicts science, but has always been supportive of it.  In fact, the physical sciences grew out of the unique Catholic doctrinal framework

Lie:

The Church murdered the great astronomical pioneer Copernicus

Truth:

Copernicus, a life-long, devout Catholic priest, was, at the end of his life, bed-ridden for several days and died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 70; no historical source reflects that the Church had anything to do with his death

Lie:

Galileo was a member of the anti-Church secret society known as the Illuminati.  The Church nearly put Galileo to death for believing that man was not the center of the universe

Truth:

Galileo couldn’t have been a member of the Illuminati because he died in 1642, more than a century before the Illuminati was formed in Bavaria in 1776.  Galileo’s life was never in danger, even when he was found guilty by a Church court after advocating, what was then, the not provable heliocentric theory of the solar system, and brazenly insulted Church officials including the pope by caricaturizing them as simpletons in his book Dialog On The Two Great World Systems.  As punishment, he was placed under house arrest in his villa, was attended to by his daughter (who was a nun) went on to study and write unimpeded, completing his greatest astronomical work, and died a peaceful death at a ripe old age

Lie:

Many devout Catholic thinkers and artists were in reality closet atheists that hated the Church

Truth:

There is no historical source that backs up Brown’s claim about the great Catholic thinkers he disparages.  Myriad early pioneers in numerous scientific fields of inquiry were devout Catholic laypeople and priests

Lie:

Opus Dei is a murderous Church cult controlled by the pope

Truth:

Opus Dei is a legitimate, peaceful Catholic organization; made up mainly of laypeople.  The founder of Opus Dei is a canonized saint of the Catholic Church

Lie:

Jesus was not divine; he married and fathered children

Truth:

There is overwhelming historical evidence that points to Jesus Christ’s crucifixion; there is no credible evidence, from secular nor religious sources, that indicates he was not crucified and survived to father children

Lie:

Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ lover, and she, not Peter, was the true head of the early Church

Truth:

The only source that indicates Mary Magdalene may have been an intimate of Jesus, and had a lead role in the early Church is a 2^nd century, forged Gnostic gospel.  

Lie:

The early Church concocted a body of lies which became the canonical gospels.  The four gospels were declared canonical by Constantine at the Council of Nicaea

Truth:

The four official gospels, Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John, were unofficially considered canonical from a time earlier than the forged, Gnostic gospels were even written, and at least 150 years prior to Constantine and the council of Nicaea.  The Church eventually had to declare that the four gospels were canonical, in response to the heresies threatening to swallow the Church.  Constantine called for the council because there were secular instabilities as a result of heretical doctrinal challenges.  Constantine had no bearing on the council’s edicts

If every single Catholic on this planet is not outraged by these disgusting lies, then we all might as well turn in our rosary beads and convert to Scientology.  Although I didn’t take the time to point out in which book or movie the phony charges originate, rest assured that there are enough falsehoods to go around.  So if Angels and Demons is slightly less disgustingly heretical than The Davinci Code, I suppose we can all be slightly less outraged; but we should be outraged nonetheless.   

Let’s not forget that Brown has repeatedly declared himself to be a meticulous researcher; while the plots of his books are fictional he maintains that the historical and religious references are factual.  Must be nice to have your cake and eat it too.   

One final point, regarding the notion that Brown’s books and movies have not had a discernable influence on people due to the fact they’re merely “harmless works of fiction.”  I would remind readers that many works of fiction have had massive impact on the world; some for better, some for worse. Notable examples are Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom's Cabin and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.  These works of fiction had a huge impact on people’s perceptions and on the events of history.  It’s particularly disturbing with Mr. Brown that works of fiction, containing pseudo-historical content, which claim to be well-researched, savage the Catholic Church with mean spirited lies and invented history.  Being a writer of fiction does not justify the waging of cultural warfare and the spreading of filthy lies about the one true Church.