ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER

One stormy night many years ago, an elderly man and his wife entered the lobby of a small hotel in Philadelphia .

Trying to get out of the rain, the couple approached the front desk hoping to get some shelter for the night.

"Could you possibly give us a room here?" the husband asked. The clerk, a friendly man with a winning smile, looked at the couple and explained that there were three conventions in town during that time.

"All of our rooms are taken," the clerk said. "But, I cannot send a nice couple like you out into the rain at one o'clock in the morning. Would you, perhaps, be willing to sleep in my room? It's not exactly a suite, but it will be good enough to make you folks comfortable for the night."

When the couple declined, the young man pressed on. "Don't worry about me; I'll make out just fine," the clerk told them with confidence and assurance.

Rather hesitant, the couple agreed and stayed for the night. The following morning as the elderly man paid his bill at the check-out counter, the man said to the helpful clerk, "You are the kind of manager who should be the boss of the best hotel in the United States . Maybe, someday, I'll build one for you."

The clerk looked at them amusingly and smiled. The three of them had a good laugh.

As the couple drove away, the elderly man agreed that the helpful clerk was indeed exceptional, as finding people who are both friendly and helpful is not easy.

Two years had passed. The clerk had almost forgotten about the incident when one morning he received a letter from the old man. The note recalled that stormy night and the old men enclosed a round-trip ticket to New York , asking the young man to pay them a visit.

The helpful clerk in the Philadelphia hotel obliged and one day took the trip to New York where the old man met him and led him to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in the fashionable commercial district of Manhattan. The old man casually pointed to a great new building right in the middle of town, a palace of reddish stone, with turrets and watchtowers thrusting up to the sky. Rather an impressive structure.

"That," said the older man, "is the hotel I have just built for YOU to manage."

"You must be joking," the young man said rather amazed.

"I can assure you I am not," said the older man, a sly smile playing on his face.

The older man's name was William Waldorf Astor, and the magnificent structure was the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, New York .

The young clerk who eventually became the first manager of Waldorf Astoria was George C. Boldt. This young hotel clerk from Philadelphia never foresaw the turn of events that would one day lead him to become the first manager of one of the world's most glamorous, impressive hotels.

Many religions teach us that we are not to turn our backs on those who are in need, for we might be entertaining angels after all.
And remember - Life is more accurately measured by the lives you touch than the things you acquire. -- Author Unknown

They keep saying "Give Obama Time"

The liberals are asking us to give Obama time. We agree . . . and think 25 to life would be appropriate.

--Jay Leno

America needs Obama-care like Nancy Pelosi needs a Halloween mask.

--Jay Leno

Q: Have you heard about McDonald's' new Obama Value Meal?

A: Order anything you like and the guy behind you has to pay for it.

--Conan O'Brien

Q: What does Barack Obama call lunch with a convicted felon?

A: A fund raiser.

--Jay Leno

Q: What's the difference between Obama's cabinet and a penitentiary?

A: One is filled with tax evaders, blackmailers, and threats to society. The other is for housing prisoners.

--David Letterman

Q: If Nancy Pelosi and Obama were on a boat in the middle of the ocean and it started to sink, who would be saved?

A: America !

--Jimmy Fallon

Q: What's the difference between Obama and his dog, Bo?

A: Bo has papers.

--Jimmy Kimmel

Q: What was the most positive result of the "Cash for Clunkers" program?

A: It took 95% of the Obama bumper stickers off the road.

--David Letterman

RUN THROUGH THE RAIN

She had been shopping with her Mom in Wal-Mart. She must have been 6 years old, this beautiful red haired, freckle faced image of innocence. It was pouring outside. The kind of rain that gushes over the top of rain gutters, so much in a hurry to hit the earth it has no time to flow down the spout. We all stood there under the awning and just inside the door of the Wal-Mart. We waited, some patiently, others irritated because nature messed up their hurried day. I am always mesmerized by rainfall. I got lost in the sound and sight of the heavens washing away the dirt and dust of the world. Memories were a welcome reprieve from the worries of my day.

Her voice was so sweet as it broke the hypnotic trance we were all caught in, "Mom, let's run through the rain," she said. "What?" Mom asked. "Let's run through the rain!" She repeated. "No, honey. We'll wait until it slows down a bit," Mom replied. This young child waited about another minute and repeated: "Mom, let's run through the rain." "We'll get soaked if we do," Mom said. "No, we won't, Mom. That's not what you said this morning," the young girl said as she tugged at her Mom's arm.

"This morning? When did I say we could run through the rain and not get wet?" "Don't you remember? When you were talking to Daddy about his cancer, you said, 'If God can get us through this, he can get us through anything!" The entire crowd stopped dead silent. I swear you couldn't hear anything but the rain. We all stood silently. No one came or left in the next few minutes.

Mom paused and thought for a moment about what she would say. Now some would laugh it off and scold her for being silly. Some might even ignore what was said. But this was a moment of affirmation in a young child's life. A time when innocent trust can be nurtured so that it will bloom into faith. "Honey, you are absolutely right. Let's run through the rain. If GOD let's us get wet, well maybe we just needed washing," Mom said. Then off they ran. We all stood watching, smiling and laughing as they darted past the cars and yes, through the puddles. They held their shopping bags over their heads just in case. They got soaked. But they were followed by a few who screamed and laughed like children all the way to their cars. And yes, I did. I ran. I got wet. I needed washing.

Circumstances or people can take away your material possessions, they can take away your money, and they can take away your health. But no one can ever take away your precious memories...So, don't forget to make time and take the opportunities to make memories everyday. To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven. A friend sent this to me to remind me of life.

I HOPE YOU STILL TAKE THE TIME TO RUN THROUGH THE RAIN.

They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them. Keep in touch with your friends; you never know when you'll need each other.

Author Unknown

The New Orleans Beating: Real Violence, Real Evidence, No Media

The Hayride publisher finds vast circumstantial evidence of politically motivated mayhem, putting the MSM narrative on trial — if they ever dare talk about it.

April 20, 2010 - by Scott McKay at Pajamas Media

A brutal beating in New Orleans following the Southern Republican Leadership Conference — held in that city from April 8-11 — has challenged the myth regarding the preferred residence of political thuggery.

Circumstantial evidence is piling up that far-left anarchists viciously attacked a staffer to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, putting Allee Bautsch and her boyfriend Joe Brown in the hospital with broken bones. The story has been, unsurprisingly, ignored.

Bautsch, a rising star in Republican politics and just 25 years old, helped organize a $10,000-a-plate GOP fundraiser at the legendary Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans. Jindal attended the affair, as did Republican Governors Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Rick Perry of Texas.

The event drew a hostile protest from a group which had initially assembled to protest the SRLC at the Hilton Riverside Hotel, a half-mile away. That protest, which had purportedly focused on state budget cuts to higher education and health care, was organized by the Iron Rail Book Collective. The Iron Rail is a self-described anarchist commune, boasting of holding book-study groups on violent revolutionary literature and having vandalized French Quarter banks in recent months.

Iron Rail members engaged in rhetoric which, had it been used by conservative protesters, would have headlined that week’s coverage.

Video of their demonstration at Brennan’s shows a protest barely short of a riot. Attendees at the fundraiser were subjected to intense verbal abuse upon arriving and leaving the restaurant.

After Jindal, Barbour, and Perry had departed the restaurant from a rear entrance, an employee of Brennan’s announced to the demonstrators that the three were no longer present. The protesters refused to either leave or to cease the abusive chanting. Sometime either before or shortly after the New Orleans Police were called in a semi-successful effort to break up the protest, Louisiana GOP Chairman Roger Villere found himself blocked from exiting the restaurant’s front door. When Villere then tried to exit through the rear, he was chased by protesters. He made a narrow escape into a waiting taxi.

About an hour later, Bautsch and Brown exited through the front door into what appeared to be a dwindling demonstration. The duo were immediately “catcalled” by the remaining protesters, and were followed by a group of approximately five white males bearing a “counterculture” appearance. The pursuers made repeated insulting comments based largely in class-warfare rhetoric: “little blond bitch,” “you think you’re f***ing special.”

Brown told Bautsch to hurry towards their car. When they reached the 600 block of St. Louis Street, a block and a half from Brennan’s, Brown turned to gauge their progress.

At that time, the attack began.

Brown was immediately set upon by four of the assailants, thrown into a wrought-iron fence. Another assailant attacked Bautsch, knocking her to the ground and stomping on her leg. She suffered four breaks in the leg, requiring a steel rod during extensive surgery on April 10, and faces three months of recuperation.

Brown suffered a broken nose and jaw, and a concussion.

Both are deeply traumatized from the attack. And both have said that while they can’t prove the attack was an explicitly political one, they believe it was exactly that, and furthermore, was committed by the protesters.

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The Democrats were right - First time for everything

Much as it pains me to say this, I have to admit it - my Democratic friends
were right.

They told me if I voted for McCain, the nation's hope would deteriorate, and sure enough there has been a 20 point drop in the Consumer Confidence Index since the election, reaching a lower point than any time during the Bush administration.

They told me if I voted for McCain, the US would become more deeply embroiled in the Middle East, and now, tens of thousands of additional troops are scheduled to be deployed into Afghanistan .

My Democratic Party friends told me if I voted for McCain, that the economy would get worse and sure enough unemployment is approaching double digits and the new stimulus packages implemented recently have sent the stock market lower than at any time since the Islamic Terrorists attacks of 9-11.

They told me if I voted for McCain, we would see more "crooks" in high ranking positions in Federal government and sure enough, several cabinet nominees and Senate appointments revealed resumes of scandal, bribery and tax fraud.

They told me if I voted for McCain, we would see more "Pork at the trough" in Federal government and sure enough, over 17,500 "Pork Bills" showed up in Congress since January 2009...

I was also told by my Democratic friends that if I voted for McCain, we would see more deficit spending in Washington D.C. , and sure enough, Obama spent more in just 30 days than all other Presidents altogether - in the entire history of the US.

Well I voted for McCain in November and my Democratic friends were right... all of their predictions have come true!

The Enemy Within: The Hidden Agenda Of The Rockefeller, Carnegie & Ford Foundations

from SliderOnTheBlack.com by SliderOnTheBlack

In 1954 Congress formed the Reece Committee to investigate the influence the large tax exempt foundations such as the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations were wielding over America’s foreign policy, governmental affairs, and education system.

This is the story of Norman Dodd, who was the chief investigator of the Reece Committee. And what follows are two interviews with Norman Dodd, one conducted by G. Edward Griffin and the other by Dr. Stan Monteith.

Before you dismiss this as Red Scare hyperbole, or recycled McCarthyism, let me share a portion of the interview where Rowan Gaither, the President of the Ford Foundation, who upon learning of the Reece Committee’s investigation, asked Mr. Dodd to come to his office in New York and openly admitted the agenda of the large tax exempt foundations…Read the rest HERE

The End of Global Warming Five-Year Average Global Temperature Anomalies from 1880 to 2006

By Art Horn is a meteorologist who has worked for CBS, NBC and ABC
From: http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2665

Five-Year Average Global Temperature Anomalies from 1880 to 2006. By: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization

The story of manmade global warming is over. In reality it never existed except in the minds and hearts of grant-seeking scientists and academics, ratings-obsessed television networks and their misinformed viewers and opportunistic eco-activists.

That said, climate change is real. The earth has been coming out of a 450-year cold era known as the “Little Ice Age” since it bottomed out in the late 1600s. Hundreds of studies have verified the existence of this cold period. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tried to erase the climate history of the last 1,000 years in its 2001 report. They replaced all the peer-reviewed studies of past climate with one that fit their needs. The now-discredited “hockey stick” graph showed virtually no significant change in temperature of the world over the last 1,000 years. Conveniently, the graph then showed a rapid and abrupt increase in global temperature during the last 100 years. This is, of course, due to our sin of burning fossil fuels and stoking the fires of global warming.

The only evidence that human activity is causing global warming comes from computer models. These models take what the people who develop them know about how the earth’s climate system works and attempt to predict the future. Computer models are not evidence. Evidence is something real, something concrete that is not subject to change. Computer models can be changed by their creator. In fact the creator of the model can make it say whatever the creator wants it to say by adjusting parameters. That is not evidence.

In 2007, a study showed the failings of computer model forecasts. The models showed that there exists a global warming “fingerprint” in the air. This fingerprint is a dramatic warming of the atmosphere, not on the ground, but 20,000 to 50,000 feet in the air above the tropics. The 2007 study revealed that real-world temperature observations by weather balloons over a 50-year period showed no global warming fingerprint at all, none. The computer models had grossly overestimated the warming over the tropics. Real world observations trump computer models. Despite this revelation the climate alarmists continued to trumpet the coming doom if we don’t change our sinful ways. To do otherwise would threaten government grants to colleges and universities, research facilities and government agencies. Large corporations are developing eco-friendly technologies to replace fossil fuels and brokerage houses are looking to cash in big time on the evolving carbon trading markets. The United Nations is looking to use climate treaties to wrestle control of carbon emissions from independent nations. This will elevate the United Nations and its leaders to the role of effectively ruling the world’s energy consumption through one world-government authority.

The greenhouse/global warming theory states that as more carbon dioxide is pumped into the air, the atmosphere’s ability to vent excess heat to space will diminish. This is the mantra of global warming alarmism. More carbon dioxide means more heat gets clogged up in the climate system and the earth gets warmer and warmer. From this we have conjured up all the various climate disasters, movies, concerts, fixes, and swindles, with their varied political and economic benefactors and victims.

Enter 2009 and a new study by Dr. Richard Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi from MIT that uses temperature data from satellites. As background we start with the predictions. The climate models say that as the oceans warmed by one degree Celsius from the 1980s into the 1990s, the amount of heat escaping to space would decrease. More heat would be trapped in the atmosphere, ultimately due to the burning of fossil fuels. The warming of the oceans was natural and part of the large multi-decadal temperature changes that have been known for years. Now if only we had a way to measure the amount of heat going out to space, then we could get some answers. We do, it’s called the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment Satellite (ERBE). It was in orbit above the earth measuring outgoing long wave radiation (heat) for 16 years from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s. This is very significant. Now we had a tool, and real world data, that we could compare to the computer model predictions. It is the ultimate climate system umpire.

The results from the Lindzen and Choi study were stunning. The computer models, all 11 of them, predicted that as the oceans and atmosphere warmed, the amount of heat escaping to space should decrease by 3 watts per square meter. If this were true, then the theory of manmade global warming would have a strong footing. But the satellite data used by the Lindzen and Choi inflicted a bone crushing blow to this assumption. As the oceans and atmosphere warmed, the measurements showed that the amount of heat escaping to space increased by 4 watts per square meter from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s. All the computer models were wrong. If the atmosphere is not trapping heat generated by warming oceans then there is no manmade global warming taking place.

The atmosphere compensated for the additional heat by opening the window a little more. The theory of global warming is lying on the canvas bloodied and dying. Alarmists will attempt to revive the carcass with even louder cries of impending doom and calls to repent. But this clamoring will fall on deaf ears. Science will ultimately prove the winner and the world will bury global warming in an icy grave where it belongs.

Art Horn is a meteorologist who has worked for CBS, NBC and ABC

50 Examples of Government Waste

From Heritage.org

Soaring government spending and trillion-dollar budget deficits have brought fiscal responsibility--and reducing government waste--back onto the national agenda. President Obama recently identified 0.004 of 1 percent of the federal budget as wasteful and proposed eliminating this $140 million from his $3.6 trillion fiscal year 2010 budget request. Aiming higher, the President recently proposed partially offsetting a costly new government health entitlement by reducing $622 billion in Medicare and Medicaid "waste and inefficiencies" over the next decade. Taxpayers may wonder why reducing such waste is now merely a bargaining chip for new spending rather than an end in itself.

It is possible to reduce spending and balance the budget. In the 1980s and 1990s, Washington consistently spent $21,000 per household (adjusted for inflation). Simply returning to that level would balance the budget by 2012 without any tax hikes. Alternatively, merely returning to the 2008 (pre-recession) spending level of $25,000 per household (adjusted for inflation) would likely balance the budget by 2019 without any tax hikes.

Not Easy, but Necessary

Reducing wasteful spending is not easy. Even the most useless programs are passionately supported by the armies of recipients, administrators, and lobbyists that benefit from their existence. Identifying inefficiencies and abuses is much easier than devising a system to fix them. Many lawmakers focus more on bringing home earmarks than on performing the less exciting task of government oversight. Exasperated taxpayers see the cost of government rise with no end in sight.

Of course, eliminating waste cannot balance the budget. Lawmakers must also rein in spending by reforming Social Security and Medicare and by eliminating government activities that are no longer affordable. Yet government waste is the low-hanging fruit that lawmakers must clean up in order to build credibility with the public for larger reforms.

Congress has allowed government employees to spend tax dollars on iPods, jewelry, gambling, exotic dance clubs, and $13,500 steak dinners. If lawmakers cannot even reduce this kind of waste, fraud, and abuse, taxpayers will be less likely to trust them to reform Social Security and Medicare.

Six Categories of Waste

The six categories of wasteful and unnecessary spending are:

1. Programs that should be devolved to state and local governments;
2. Programs that could be better performed by the private sector;
3. Mistargeted programs whose recipients should not be entitled to government benefits;
4. Outdated and unnecessary programs;
5. Duplicative programs; and
6. Inefficiency, mismanagement, and fraud.

The first four categories are generally subjective, and reasonable people can disagree on whether a given federal program falls under their purview. Yet the final two categories--duplication and inefficiency, mismanagement, and fraud--are comparatively easy to identify and oppose. Thus, they are heavily represented in the examples of government waste below:

1. The federal government made at least $72 billion in improper payments in 2008.[1]
2. Washington spends $92 billion on corporate welfare (excluding TARP) versus $71 billion on homeland security.[2]
3. Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties.[3]
4. Government auditors spent the past five years examining all federal programs and found that 22 percent of them--costing taxpayers a total of $123 billion annually--fail to show any positive impact on the populations they serve.[4]
5. The Congressional Budget Office published a "Budget Options" series identifying more than $100 billion in potential spending cuts.[5]
   
   Read 45 more examples at Heritage.org

The liberal plot against American education

By Robert Weissberg @ American Thinker

I am usually skeptical about conspiracy theories, but American education's sorrowful state has increasingly pushed me in that direction. Some background: I've analyzed K-12 schooling for years and observed an odd pattern: We increasingly spend billions to improve it (with much of the increase directed toward uplifting blacks and Hispanics), but progress is miniscule. Setting aside sheer stupidity as an explanation, this blatant wastefulness is a prime candidate for a nefarious "dark forces" account. But more importantly, if this is indeed something other than stupidity (or the Illuminati, Freemasons, the Tri-Lateral Commission, and the like)...then could it be a "whodunit"?

My first inclination was to round up the usual suspects: liberals. After all, all the outward signs of the "crime" point to this familiar culprit. There is the usual hasty fiscal extravagance, a muddle-brained potpourri of unreachable aims, the reflexive expansion of state power, and a commitment to "progress," absent boundaries. More telling, there is the signature dependency-for-life outcome where youngsters migrate from one government program to the next. But would this circumstantial evidence warrant a grand jury indictment, let alone a conviction? Harder evidence was required: if not a smoking gun, then at least a theory of the crime (to use some prosecutorial lingo).

A dot-connecting "eureka" moment occurred when I read a November 29, 2009 New York Times editorial titled "Over-Punishment in Schools." In an instant, I now possessed a valuable clue -- an Exhibit A -- to offer the jury to demonstrate how liberals are intentionally destroying American education so as to "help" minorities.

The editorial claimed that increased school policing (as opposed to informal intervention by principals or guidance counselors who consult parents) is disproportionally hindering the education of blacks and Hispanics. To wit, "[c]hildren who are singled out for arrest and suspension are at greater risk of dropping out and becoming permanently entangled with the criminal justice system. It is especially troublesome that these children tend to be disproportionately black and Hispanic, and have emotional problems or learning disabilities." The editorial then praised a New York City proposal ensuring greater accountability and transparency in school discipline while making it easier for parents, students, and teachers to lodge complaints against school security officers.

Make no mistake -- the race/ethnic-related pattern in school discipline is genuine and widening. An Education Week (November 23, 2009) article summarized school suspension data by race and reported that from 1999 to 2000 and from 2007 to 2008, the overall suspension rate increased by 47%. More specifically, for whites, the rate declined by 5.4%; for blacks, it soared by 74.5%; and the figure for Hispanics was 114.7%. In 2007-2008, whites comprised 28.3% of all suspensions, while blacks made up 51.3% of the total. The data for expulsions are similar. Between 1999-2000 and 2007-2008, expulsions rose by 43.7%; and while this increase affected all groups, the rate for blacks was more than three times that of whites (the Hispanic increase was five times that of whites). And as one might predict, blacks were nearly half (45.7%) of those expelled. Actually, since local civil rights groups -- not to mention the ACLU -- are quick to protest strict disciplinary measures directed against blacks, especially by white teachers and administrators, these figures probably underestimate racial discrepancies.

This is pretty good proof of liberal intent. Begin with the obvious: Keeping troublemakers in school hinders learning for everyone, including African-Americans. Indeed, the single most effective cure for academic insufficiency is exiling all troublemakers, not rescuing them. Teachers can hardly teach when students loudly socialize or heap abuse on the teacher or annoy classmates inclined to learn. Why attend a school with rampant bullying or threats of bodily injury? Moreover, faced with numerous troublemakers, prudent teachers just keep a lid on school violence by ignoring petty transgressions (e.g., classroom cell phone use). And forget about high academic standards, since these might keep miscreants a year longer or instigate disruptive demonstrations.

All the transparency and "fairness" demanded by the Times further undermine education by adding yet more administrative burdens to schools already challenged in performing basic bureaucratic functions, let alone properly instructing their students. We are talking about schools struggling with compiling honest enrollment figures, accurate graduation statistics, and updated student information, to say nothing of tracking books and equipment. Now, with the threat of legal action hanging over their heads, hard-pressed school administrators will have to document disciplinary procedures to withstand assaults from self-appointed "community activists" and ACLU-type lawyers convinced that due process outranks learning.

In fact, to avoid a financially ruinous class action lawsuit, schools may now impose court-like judicial proceedings, complete with written transcripts, multiple witnesses, and similar time-consuming procedures that must inevitably undermine the school's core mission. So rather than immediately expel someone who hit a teacher, wise school administrators, like doctors fearing frivolous malpractice suits, will instead generate paperwork as the first line of defense. And rest assured that troublemakers will soon notice and exploit this paralysis. Teaching becomes a game to avoid the problems that inevitably occur when imposing the law and order vital to imparting knowledge.

Further forget about attracting dedicated teachers to troubled schools. Experienced, capable teachers enjoy multiple opportunities, but who would willingly teach at a school where establishing discipline can become a risky bureaucratic nightmare? What teacher wants every action put under the legal microscope? Only about-to-retire zombie lifers might survive in such settings.

It should be equally obvious that this self-imposed destruction of learning is also a windfall for those feeding off the education colossus. It is, ladies and gentleman, the Great Society incarnate. With troublemakers enjoying near-diplomatic immunity from punishment, schools have no choice but to hire armies of workers to mitigate their impact...and as in any well-formulated, government-financed, make-work scheme, everyone receives a turn at the trough. There will be more social workers, mental health counselors, anti-violence program supervisors and coordinators, role models, and mentors for at-risk students, right on down to more janitors skilled in graffiti removal, school safety officers, technicians to repair vandalized surveillance equipment, classroom assistants to keep an eye on the mischief-makers, and whatever else it takes to staff these prison-like schools. Some experts have demanded special training so teachers can "understand" the troubled world of these miscreants. Put bluntly, keeping a few criminally inclined students in school regardless of the damage can probably feed countless families who might otherwise go unemployed.

These extra bodies necessary for maintain dangerous schools are also a windfall for the Democratic Party and its expand-the-state policies. Bloated school payrolls guarantee more dues-paying members to education unions like the NEA and AFT, both central to Democratic fundraising and voting drives. (These unions also supply many delegates to the party's presidential nominating convention.) They are also a ready-made voter base for erstwhile "education" mayors and governors "committed to helping the children" who all the while push government farther into fiscal insolvency.

So can any reasonable person honestly believe that liberals are sincerely committed to improving American education when they insist that chronic, often violent troublemakers should be kept in school at all costs? Nobody can be that stupid -- not even those who write editorials for the New York Times.

Robert Weissberg is Professor Emeritus of political science at University of Illinois-Urbana.

The Communists Behind Obama’s Health Care Goals

Posted By John Perazzo , December 23, 2009 , Front Page. The polls [1] have been clear for quite some time: By a substantial margin, Americans oppose the efforts of Barack Obama [2] and Congressional Democrats to enact a massive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, one that would greatly expand the federal government’s role [3]. Significantly, the President’s deeply held positions on healthcare were derived largely from the influence of a politically aggressive group of longtime Marxists whose worldviews were consistent with those Obama had already developed from other radical influences in his life. But before we examine who those particular Marxists were, let us establish, with certainty, what Obama’s long-term objectives for healthcare actually are. As an Illinois state senator in 2003, Obama unambiguously told an AFL-CIO conference: “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer, universal healthcare [4] [plan]…. That’s what I’d like to see.” In a single-payer system, a government-run organization [5] would manage the healthcare of every man, woman, and child in the United States—collecting all related fees and paying out all related costs. At an SEIU [6] Health Care Forum on March 24, 2007, Obama sang the same tune[4]—though this time he conceded that the attainment of his ultimate vision might require a gradual, incremental approach: “There’s going to be, potentially, some transition process. I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out…” In the summer of 2008, when a campaign audience member asked him to comment[7] on single-payer healthcare, Obama candidly replied: “If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system.” Earlier this year, however, the President—recognizing the American public’s opposition to such a system, as reflected in every reputable opinion poll—made a calculated political move to withdraw the single-payer option from the bargaining table. In its stead, he argued in favor of a so-called “public option [8],” where a government plan would be set up to “compete” with private insurers—and would undoubtedly drive many of those insurers out of business [8]. In an effort to assuage people’s fear that he was seeking to transform the world’s finest healthcare system into a government-run reflection of his own socialist ideals, Obama said this on June 15: “What are not legitimate concerns are those being put forward claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.… So, when you hear the nay-sayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this—they are not telling the truth.” But in light of his earlier quotes, this was less than candid. Obama’s pre-opinion poll position on the matter of single-payer healthcare was clear and unwavering. His more recent departure from that position is perfectly consistent with the tactics advocated by his political guru, the late Saul Alinsky [9], who counseled revolutionaries to conceal their real motives; to say and do whatever is necessary to allay the fears and suspicions of the middle class; and to pursue incremental change where overnight transformation is not possible—knowing they can always agitate for additional change at some point in the future. Notwithstanding his concession to political practicality, it is clear that the ultimate objective of President Obama’s self-identified quest to “fundamentally transform the United States of America [10],” is to move the nation as far as possible, albeit incrementally, toward a single-payer system. How did Obama come to embrace the single-payer ideal as the best of all possible options? Thanks to some extraordinary research Trevor Loudon [11] and Brenda J. Elliott [12], among others, we know the answer. The primary figure who delivered Obama to the single-payer camp was Quentin Young, an 86-year-old retired physician who was a longtime friend and neighbor of Obama in Chicago. Young joined [11] the Young Communist League [13] as a teenager in the late 1930s. From the mid-1940s through the mid-1970s, he was closely associated with the Communist Party. In October 1968 he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was probing the extent of his knowledge about the riots that had erupted at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago two months earlier. The Committee accused Young of belonging to the Bethune Club, an organization for communist doctors; the group was named after Norman Bethune, a communist physician who devoted his services to the totalitarian regime of Mao Zedong [14]. Dr. Young was active in the radical movements of the Sixties and Seventies and led[11] a small delegation to Communist North Vietnam in 1972. In the late 1970s, Young became associated [11] with a Marxist organization known as the New American Movement, which was initially convened by Michael Lerner [15], an America-hating radical who counseled young people to explore the use of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs as portals to a greater comprehension of socialist principles. In 1980 Young founded the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, a single-payer lobby group [16] whose Board of Directors he chairs to this day. In 1982 Young helped establish the Democratic Socialists of America [17], which, as the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International, asserts [18] that “many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed.” In 1987 Young co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), a single-payer advocacy organization where he currently serves as national coordinator. In PNHP’s view, government-run healthcare “should be financed by truly progressive taxation [19].” In 1995 Young attended [11] the now-famous meeting at the Hyde Park home of former Weather Underground [20] terrorists Bill Ayers [21] and Bernardine Dohrn [22], where Barack Obama was first introduced to influential locals as the hand-picked successor to Alice Palmer [23], a pro-Soviet radical who planned to vacate her Illinois State Senate seat in pursuit of a higher elected office. Young quickly became a friend and political ally of Obama, teaching [24] the latter about the merits of single-payer healthcare. In a 2009 interview [25] with Amy Goodman [26] of Democracy Now! [27], Young reminisced about the germination of his ideological kinship with the young Obama: “Barack Obama, in those early days [as a state senator]—influenced, I hope, by me and others—categorically said single payer was the best way, and he would inaugurate it if he could get the support, meaning [Democratic] majorities in both houses, which he’s got, and the presidency, which he’s got. And he said that on more than one occasion….” Another noteworthy influence on Obama’s views vis à vis healthcare has been Dr. Peter Orris, who co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program with Quentin Young. The son of a Communist Party member, Orris in the 1960s was a leader of Harvard University’s campus chapter of Students for a Democratic Society [28], the New Leftist organization that aspired to overthrow America’s democratic institutions and remake the nation’s government in a Marxist image. He later joined the Communist Party (CP) for more than two decades, before ultimately shifting his allegiance to the CP splinter group, Committees of Correspondence, where he remains a prominent figure to this day. Other leading PNHP activists (and thus, key shapers of President Obama’s healthcare agendas) include the following [11]: Joanne Landy, a high-ranking member of the Democratic Socialists of America Mark Almberg, a prominent member of the Illinois Communist Party since the 1970s Oliver Fein (PNHP President) and Steffi Woolhandler (PNHP Secretary), both of whom have spoken in favor of a single-payer healthcare system at the annualSocialist Scholars Conferences [29] in New York City The Communist influences on President Obama’s healthcare objectives do not end with the foregoing list of PNHP leaders. In 2004, PNHP collaborated with a number of likeminded, far-left organizations to form a wider coalition, Healthcare-NOW!, which likewise promotes single-payer reform (and, notably, enjoys the strong support [30] of the Socialist Party USA). Obama’s friend and mentor, Quentin Young, is a central figure in Healthcare-NOW!, serving as the network’s national coordinator and co-chair[31]. Other prominent members of Healthcare-NOW!’s Board of Directors [31]—who, like their counterparts at PNHP, exert a major influence on President Obama—include[11]: Medea Benjamin [32], the pro-Castro [33], America-hating co-founder of Global Exchange [34], Code Pink for Peace [35], and Iraq Occupation Watch [36] Michael Lighty, a longtime member (and former chairman) [31] of the Democratic Socialists of America Flavio Casoy, a San Francisco-based doctor and a prominent member of the Communist Party USA Rev. Lucius Walker [37], the pro-Castro executive director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization [38], and a longtime supporter of Communist Party USA activities [31] Barack Obama did not conceive of socialized medicine on his own. His acceptance of such a system was cultivated and nurtured by the same types of Marxist revolutionaries with whom he has surrounded himself throughout his entire adult life – and who are now shaping the major policy agendas of his administration.