Greg welcomes guests Sherrod Small and R.A. the Rugged Man.
Soros-Funded Study Ranks Soros Last in Transparency
Liberal billionaire George Soros' foundation is among the most opaque think tanks in the country, according to a study funded by that foundation.
The study, by a group called Transparify, ranked 35 U.S. think tanks based on the amount of financial information that they make publicly available.
Soros' Open Society Foundations rank dead last, earning zero stars out of a possible five. That designation is reserved for groups that dislose "no relevant or up-to-date information" on their finances.
The study notes that Transparify "is funded by the Think Tank Fund of the Open Society Foundations (OSF). As OSF is listed by the ranking used for selection, our raters applied rating criteria as they did with all other institutions."
"The OSF website highlights George Soros as their founder, but does not specify the funding source on its expenditure page," the study noted. "OSF emphasized to us that they do not consider themselves to be a think tank and that they are funded exclusively by George Soros."
The Center for American Progress, a Soros-funded think tank that frequently bemoans secretive political spending, also fared poorly, earning one out of five stars.
In contrast, the Heritage Foundation, commonly considered the flagship conservative think tank in Washington, earned four stars, putting it in the "broadly transparent" category.
It's time once again to play the "what if?" game.
What if Governor Rick Perry of Texas told a radio show's host that "people who support abortion, gun control, and same-sex marriage have no place in Texas." Do you think that might make some heads explode on MSNBC and throughout the biased liberal media?
But, of course, it's not Rick Perry who said something so arrogant and obnoxious. No, it was one of the "tolerant liberal" governors, Andrew Cuomo of New York. Which means the only reaction you'll see from MSNBC types are nods of agreement.
While talking with Susan Arbetter on her "The Capitol Pressroom" radio show Friday morning, Cuomo said this:
The Republican Party candidates are running against the SAFE Act — it was voted for by moderate Republicans who run the Senate! Their problem is not me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves. Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that's who they are and they're the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.
As Mary Katharine Ham points out:
He at least uses the liberal pejoratives for those who are pro-2nd Amendment and oppose gay marriage. "Right to life" he uses as if it's offensive on its face. As Life News notes, he leans heavily on the President Barack tactic to simply declare everyone who disagrees with your positions in the slightest "extreme," even if many of those people are your constituents. But how extreme is the pro-life position, even in a blue state like New York? Unlike, say, gay marriage, the polling on abortion restrictions, particularly second and third trimesters, regularly and overwhelmingly favors the more conservative position.
Cuomo spent much of 2013 trying to pass a Reproductive Health Act that moved the opposite direction of abortion legislation in states like Texas and North Carolina. He took from the Dr. Gosnell's House of Horrors story that, hey, who shouldn't be able to perform abortions, huh? The legislation, which was stuck into a broader Women's Equality Act, stalled in the Senate because of its abortion provisions and under strong fire from the state's bishops, who apparently are also no longer welcome in New York.
Tom Blumer has more details, along with audio of the broadcast:
Arbetter had just cast doubt on Cuomo's progressive legitimacy: "… because you're out raising money from these traditional Republican donors, there's a fear that you're leaving your progressive roots behind, which was, it sort of emblematic that you visited the Harvard Club yesterday (audibly chuckling at the very thought), it sort of underscores that sort of move away from traditional Democratic values."
Cuomo changed the subject, assuming an arrogant, condescending parent-to-child tone which has to be heard to be believed...
Newflash for Il Douche: Catholics and all other pro-life supporters won't be pushed around. 'Extreme' 'Right-to-Life' Citizens of the State of New York React to Governor Cuomo's Banishment Fantasy
And while it was his inclusion of right-to-life people in his list of undesirables that caught my eye, it's also worth noting that opposition to his gun-control legislation is widespread:
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| Junius Scales in FBI custody |
This is the story of how a wealthy and privileged Southern WASP got caught up in the subversive world of Communism.
Yale historian Glenda Gilmore, in her award-winning book about radical roots of the civil rights movement, recalled a childhood event in her native Greensboro: "When I was about eight, I visited an abandoned mansion in our neighborhood. Here, everyone whispered, was where the Communist had lived. No one really understood what a Communist was; rather, the lesson lay in what became of them. They left their homes, they lost their families, and they went to prison. That's what happened to...the rich golden-haired boy who had grown up in that house."
The rich golden-haired boy was Junius Irving Scales. Born in 1920 to a prominent North Carolina family, Scales was named for his grandfather, a Confederate colonel, and Scales' father was named for the colonel’s brother, governor of North Carolina after Democratic "redemption" of the state from Republican Reconstruction. As a boy, Scales lived in a 34-room mansion built by his father in a new development of his, just west of the then-city limits of Greensboro. According to Scales, his father, a lawyer and real estate developer, was then a millionaire several times over. Among the family's servants was a black woman born into slavery; she wore a servant's uniform and attended to young Scales.
The family fortune faltered in the late 20s, however, and they left the mansion and rented a home in Chapel Hill. Scales was an avid reader, and at age 15 he became a fixture at Chapel Hill's Intimate Bookshop. There, as expressed by Gilmore, Scales "breathed in the radical politics that mingled in the bookstore’s dust." In the 30s, according to Gilmore "varying shades of liberals, Socialists, anti-Fascists, and new Communists came together to create a hotbed of agitation among students and professors at the University [of North Carolina]..." Scales enrolled at the University, where he soon became disenchanted with his classmates; disenchantment led to depression, and he attempted suicide. Later he found some like-minded friends interested in radical politics, and as Gilmore concluded, "Radical politics held out a lifeline to Scales."
As is so often the case with the feckless children of the leisure class, Junius Scales, the inept social misfit, decided not to deal with his personal hang-ups in a positive way but instead chose to make his problems society's problems. He turned against his country and embraced Stalin. And, typically, copped out by claiming that it was based on his burning need to right the wrong of systemic discrimination against black people.
Obviously joining the civil rights movement is admirable. The fallacy of Scales, however, is the claim that it was the "only" way to get involved. He could have worked to improve things by using his status and prominent name - along with whatever skills he may have possessed - without becoming a Communist. Many people managed to work on behalf of civil rights without betraying their country.
No, he chose to become a Communist as a way to rebel against his country, like Bradley Manning, because that was apparently easier than dealing with his own personal issues. If you don't think that American leftists have crippling anti-social problems then you really must take a few minutes to scan the comments sections of any Conservative blog and read the trollish rhetorical belches they spend all day posting. But I digress...
As the article explains, Scales finally woke up in 1957 when Stalin was denounced by Khrushchev:
Scales later summarized the effect on him: "Most of what the capitalist press and the professional anti-Soviet experts had been saying about the Soviet Union for years was true... Stalin - my revered symbol of the infallibility of Communism...had been a murderous, power-hungry monster! My idol had crumbled to dust forever."
It's unfortunate that so many proud Americans were smeared as "rabid" and "paranoid" by misguided and subversive types like Scales simply for pointing out what he himself eventually came to realize was true: Stalin was a monster who killed tens of millions and every member of the Communist Party was doing work on his behalf.
The disgusting "dupes" of Stalin deserved to be marginalized every bit as much as Nazi sympathizers. The wages of worshiping mass-murdering dictators should be the same. Instead, Scales became a cause célèbre who eventually received a pardon from President John F. Kennedy.
Let there be no misunderstanding on this point. I'm not implying that Nazi sympathizers deserved the same preferential treatment and "do-overs" that Communists received but rather the opposite: punish them all to the fullest extent of the law for their crimes and marginalize them in society for everything else. They are equally bad and for too long has this double-standard existed.
After all, it must be remembered that for two years from 1939 to 1941, Communists were supportive of Nazi Germany and against U.S. involvement in the war because that's what Stalin and the party instructed them to do. It didn't end until Hitler broke the deal by invading Russia. That's when shit got real. But the lesson here is that statists will be statists and their interests are not based on any kind of humanity but on enhancing their power. Inside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out.
Greg welcomes guests Jesse Joyce, Sam Sorbo and a very frightened Joe Machi.
Associated Press slams White House for staged photos; tells press not to use the Dear Leader's propaganda
As if Obama's "imperial presidency" needed any more substantiation, The Associated Press' photography director, Santiago Lyon, outed the Obama regime for refusing press photographers access to the White House and instead routinely handing over images taken privately by his own photographers. Lyon called the material 'propaganda" at the AP Media Editors national convention on Oct. 30, The Daily Caller reported, adding:
"The AP has only been permitted to photograph the president alone in the Oval Office on two occasions – both in his first term – and has never been allowed to photograph the president with his staff in the office."
AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said the practice is commonplace because, quite simply, the media is accepting it and using the photos. Carroll advised members of the media attending the conference to "stop using the White House's preferred photos in their own stories," The Daily Caller reported.
Propaganda photos come in lock-step with another practice coming to light recently — Obama's closed meetings with hand-picked journalists whose names are not disclosed. "We don't provide lists of participants," White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz said, according to Politico.
Greg welcomes guests Buck Sexton, Tom Cotter and Jonna Spilbor.
MSNBC now using "R-word" in place of "Redskins"
Liberal media is having its own team huddle about the propriety of "Redskins" with an eye to manufacturing a new norm for liberals and Democrats. It'll be fascinating to watch it enforced against unsuspecting pols like Obama, who'll say something absentmindedly cheery in an interview about RGIII hopefully leading the Redskins to the Super Bowl this year and then be caught by surprise by the grumbling in otherwise favorable news outlets. He'll learn his lesson; in a few years, Democratic politicians will train themselves to refer only to "Washington" when discussing the local franchise. And then, once Democratic unanimity is more or less achieved, Republicans who continue to use the term will be branded racist. The Overton window will move on this. The question is how long it'll take, and whether too much grumbling at first will produce a backlash.
Oleg Atbashian, a writer and graphic artist from the former USSR, is the author of Shakedown Socialism, of which David Horowitz said, "I hope everyone reads this book." In 1994 he moved to the U.S. with the hope of living in a country ruled by reason and common sense, appreciative of its freedoms and prosperity.
To his dismay, he discovered a nation deeply infected by the leftist disease of "progressivism" that was arresting true societal progress. American movies, TV, and news media reminded him of his former occupation as a visual propaganda artist for the Communist Party -- a job he reluctantly held, as he knew that no intelligent person would take such art-by-numbers agitprop seriously.
Oleg is the creator of a satirical website ThePeoplesCube.com, which Rush Limbaugh described on his show as "a Stalinist version of The Onion." His graphic work frequently appears in the American Thinker (and The New Counter-Culture!)
Long story short: This man knows of what he writes and his 3-part examination of Leftist techniques is must-read information.
Part 1: Demonizing the Non-Compliant
In a society shaped by the government's mind games of manipulative illusions, a dissenter sticks out like a sore thumb. Once the resistance has been demonized, its members will be quickly identified and denounced by the compliant citizenry, labeled as the enemy, and be dealt with by law enforcement.
In the end, the self-preservation of modern-day totalitarianism is ensured, not so much by the secret police with its army of snitches and brutal enforcers, as by modern technologies of psychological manipulation through the media, education, and entertainment.
Part 2: Demonizing the Opposition
Most modern-day leftists in Western countries have abandoned the idea of a violent revolution, having replaced it with "the long march through the institutions" as part of the culture war to transform the society through cultural hegemony. Instead of commanding firing squads, they play mind games of manipulative illusions, in which the demonization of dissent plays a crucial role. The basic premise hasn't changed: as much as the statists want you to love them, they want you to hate their opponents even more.
Part 3: Demonizing Human Nature
From the economy to crime prevention to education to foreign relations, America's policies today are based on the Marxist premise that crime results from poverty, economic crisis results from greed, injustice results from capitalist exploitation, corruption results from the free markets, and militant Islamism results from Western colonialism. Therefore, peace and harmony can only be achieved through equal redistribution of wealth, appeasement, and a global effort to reshape human nature through politically correct, collectivist indoctrination.
Predictably, a faulty premise leads to a faulty outcome: the economy is stumbling, education is failing, corruption is spreading, crime is rising, and militant Islamism is gaining more ground. Instead of creating the New Man, the suppression and demonization of natural human traits breeds moral and intellectual freaks. Where normalcy is outlawed, abnormalities flourish.
The most damaging outcome of this fallacy, however, is also the least visible -- and thus rarely mentioned: the government effort to demonize our individual thoughts, impulses, and human nature itself can only result in the eventual dehumanization of our society, turning independent American citizens into mindless statistical units, spiritless cogs in the machine, and powerless subjects of the state, ripe for abuse by any sociopathic government official with dictatorial tendencies.
"From the age of Big Brother, from the age of the Thought Police, from a dead man...greetings."
The clumsy argument she makes in her article would be comical if it wasn't so damn dangerous. She is either inexcusably naive or unforgivably disingenuous. You be the judge.
Now that the trial is over, we ought to know their names.
I'm not advocating that these women become targets of anger over their not guilty verdict - I think they made a sound decision based on the law.
And I'm not suggesting that the jurors be pressured to talk if they choose not to.
I am saying that judges have no business keeping juries anonymous once a trial is over.
Secrecy has no place in a court system founded on openness.
Probably no surprise coming from a newspaper columnist.
(Full disclosure: My employer, the Orlando Sentinel, is arguing in court for the jurors' names to be made public. The judge hasn't ruled.)
It's so generous of her to not advocate that the jurors become targets. Wow. But surely she knows that while a citizen does have a right to refuse to speak to reporters it doesn't do them much good when the reporters are camped outside the house, just waiting for the juror (or members of the juror's family) to come out and run the gauntlet. Is she really that naive?
Does she really think that a media feeding frenzy can be neutralized merely by refusing to cooperate with it? If anything, the opposite is true. The fact of the matter is that they will be pressured - relentlessly pressured - whether they encourage it or not.
She and her employer, the liberal Orlando Sentinel, have a self-serving interest in outing these jurors and it's legitimate to suspect that their interest is not merely for the sake of transparency. She can claim that she agrees with the verdict but that's actually a bit weaselly.
Most experts, including the ones who hate the verdict, understand that the prosecution's case simply did not meet it's burden of proof. Agreeing with that assessment is one thing. But there are obviously plenty of people who are furious about it. Dangerously furious.
There's no reason to assume that Kassab and her newspaper are interested in doing fluff pieces about the jurors. They want to give the jurors the journalistic version of a TSA-style cavity search in order to satisfy the outrageously outrageous outrage of their liberal readers. She continues:
But there are reasons why everyone should care about making sure juries aren't kept in the shadows.
Plain and simple: Secret juries undermine public confidence in the system.
The right to a jury trial is as fundamental as the other civil liberties also enshrined in the Constitution.
The Founding Fathers intentionally set up the jury system — panels of everyday people to judge guilt. What a stark contrast to the secretive Star Chamber courts that colonists left behind.
When juries aren't open to scrutiny, the American legal system is asking for trouble.
Whoaa! Say hello to Mr. Strawman!
First of all, it's not really a "secret" jury. The court knows who they are. Everybody who was allowed in the courtroom during proceedings saw them sitting there, day after day.
Secondly, the jurors were "scrutinized" - by the court and by both the prosecutors and defense lawyers. It's called voir dire:
From French "to see to speak," the questioning of prospective jurors by a judge and attorneys in court. Voir dire is used to determine if any juror is biased and/or cannot deal with the issues fairly, or if there is cause not to allow a juror to serve (knowledge of the facts; acquaintanceship with parties, witnesses or attorneys; occupation which might lead to bias; prejudice against the death penalty; or previous experiences such as having been sued in a similar case).
And the jurors were not running the show, so nothing happened in that courtroom on their initiative except when they asked a question. In other words, sequestering them did not grant them any special authority or influence over the proceedings. It was their inconvenience, not ours.
Also, nobody is advocating that all trial juries be kept secret as a general rule. The vast majority of them are not like this. Clearly this case required special precautions. Her argument would have some validity if there actually were people demanding that all juries be sequestered. But they're not.
Then she tries to provide an example...big mistake!
Consider the case of John Gotti.
The Mafia leader was acquitted of racketeering by an anonymous jury in 1987.
Five years went by before it was discovered that one juror had Mafia connections and took a bribe to push for an acquittal.
Perhaps if the jury had not been anonymous, the truth about the rogue juror would have been discovered sooner - or the bribe wouldn't have happened at all because the risk of scrutiny would have been too great.
Actually, the point of keeping the jurors secret was not only to protect them from possible retaliation but also to shield them from attempts at bribery and/or intimidation prior to the trial. As she points out, the precautions ultimately failed to keep one of the jurors from tanking the verdict. He was a friend of a friend of a "friend of ours." Go figure! Is she really saying that had the media known who the jurors were that they could have prevented the fix? Naive or disingenuous?
She goes on to explain that the need to protect the identities of jurors grew during the 1980s and early '90s due to serious threat of organized crime and ultra-violent drug cartels. Her argument now, apparently, is that if that kind of threat doesn't exist then there's no legitimate reason to keep jurors anonymous. She claims that the "media and the public" are being unfairly categorized as the new "bad guys."
Legal experts I talked with couldn't recall a single instance of a juror being hurt or threatened after a trial.
They might have to deal with knocks on the door by reporters, but they aren't compelled to talk - though some of them almost always do.
Just look at B37, who is making book deals and TV appearances while also enjoying her anonymity.
The ink was barely dry on Zimmerman's acquittal form when an agent announced B37 had a book deal (short-lived, it turns out). Then B37 appeared on CNN on Monday and Tuesday night, though only in a darkened silhouette that didn't show her face.
Naive or disingenuous? She doesn't have any evidence regarding a juror being hurt or threatened after a trial. Really? Is that the new standard? It seems to me that prior to February 2012 George Zimmerman had never killed anybody before. And yet it happened. It's funny how first-time things happen, even when they never happened before. Liberal "logic" at work.
But, again, how magnanimous she is to concede that they might have to deal with people knocking on their door. How 20th Century. Is she really not aware of the internet and social media? Is she not aware that thanks to Google Maps any asshole can find a juror's house, including a street visual, and go there to do pretty much whatever they want?
Given the emotional outcry, the threats of violence as well as actual violence and property damage we've seen since the verdict, does she really think that the public poses no threat? She finally confirms her snarky liberal bias when she mentions the juror who appeared on CNN and briefly had a book deal. What she doesn't mention is how and why the book deal was ultimately scrubbed.
It was a Twitter mob. They were angry that the jury acquitted Zimmerman; angry about her appearing on CNN; angry about what she had to say and angry that she was going to "profit from the acquittal." I'm pretty sure that such a book deal would have been offered whatever the final verdict. So the book deal had nothing to do with the acquittal. Not that it mattered to the mob.
They didn't know the identity of the juror but they did know the identity of the literary agent who had made the offer. So they applied pressure to her instead. One can only imagine what kind of pressure they would have brought to bear on the juror herself if they could have. As it was, the agent quickly surrendered and dumped the juror. The juror herself also responded by saying that she would not pursue a book deal in the future.
But, of course, there's no chance that outing the jurors would subject them to mob action, either in person or via the media...right?
At FrontPage Magazine they have a motto: Inside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out.
The magazine recently held an essay contest with this concept as the theme. Here are the top three essays.
Inside the Progressive Mind
by N.A. Halkides
The Progressive believes in precisely two things: his own magnificence and the constructive power of brute force. In combination, they lead him naturally from the role of pestiferous busybody to brutal dictator. Where the productive man dreams of the things he might create if only left alone by his fellows, the Progressive dreams of the world he could create if only the lives and property of his fellows were at his disposal. The roots of his pathology lie in that oldest and most destructive of all human vices, the desire for the power to rule over other men.
Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out
by Oleg Atbashian
There is a reason why snobby elites on the Upper West Side of Manhattan generously donate to leftist causes and support leftist politicians. Snobs and radicals often act in accord because they are not opposites, as some believe, but rather spiritual cousins – equally despising "the bourgeois," sharing a low view of humanity as herd animals, and sorting people not on their individual merits but by color, income, occupation, ethnicity, gender, and any other characteristic except the content of their minds.
Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out
by Daniel Greenfield
The defining characteristic of tyranny is the diversion of power from the people to the unelected elite. The elite can claim to be inspired by Allah or Marx; it can act in the name of racial purity or universal workers compensation or both. The details don't matter, because in all instances, tyranny derives its justification from the superiority of the rulers and the inferiority of the people.
