A Female Military Pioneer in Arizona

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness." — George Washington

The other morning I was watching Fox and Friends on the Fox News Network. One of the guests being interviewed by Gretchen Carlson and Steve Doocy was Colonel Martha McSally, a Republican candidate running for Gabby Giffords' former congressional seat in Arizona’s 8^th District.

McSally has an interesting and highly decorated past. In January 1995, she became the first woman in U.S. history to fly a combat aircraft into enemy territory when she flew her initial mission into Iraq to help enforce the United Nations' "no-fly zone." She was part of the team that helped plan and execute the U.S. air operations over Afghanistan shortly after 9/11.

In July 2004, McSally took command of the 354th Fighter Squadron, becoming the first woman in U.S. history to command a combat aviation unit. While defending her country she has received numerous honors, including being recognized by the University of Arizona and "Women Who Lead," in addition to receiving the Tucson YWCA Women on the Move Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Center on Women in Policing. American Thinker interviewed her about her fascinating career and why she decided to run for the seat previously held by Congresswoman Giffords.

Her no-nonsense attitude came across loud and clear while she described her uphill battle with the Pentagon. In 1995, McSally became aware of the U.S. military policy requiring U.S. servicewomen stationed in Saudi Arabia to wear the Muslim garment called an abaya, a black head-to-toe robe that signifies women's subordination to men. They had to wear it over their uniform while on duty as well as off duty. In 2000, it became personal when McSally was deployed to Saudi Arabia and was told that either she must submit to it or be charged with insubordination.

In 2001-2002, a lawsuit was filed and a bill was brought before Congress so women would not have to wear the Muslim clothing. Ten days after the bill was drafted, it passed unanimously in the House and Senate. McSally made sure that as part of the law, all U.S. servicewomen deployed in Saudi Arabia were given a copy of the legislation. A lesson learned that she hopes to carry to Congress: it is important to fight for American values since this was "constitutionally wrong. People that were not of the Muslim faith were forced to wear Muslim garb, the American taxpayer was financing this, and it affected our military order, discipline, and effectiveness."

McSally graduated from St. Mary Academy — Bay View and then the United States Air Force Academy in 1988. She earned a Master's degree from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She earned her wings at Laughlin AFB, Texas and was initially assigned as a First Assignment Instructor Pilot (FAIP) in the T-37. She was selected for Lead-in Fighter Training (LIFT) in 1993, completed the Replacement Training Unit for the A-10 Thunderbolt II, was assigned to an operational A-10 squadron and was deployed to Kuwait in January 1995. During that deployment, she flew combat patrol over Iraq under Operation Southern Watch, enforcing the no-fly zone. In 2000, she reported to Joint Task Force Southwest Asia (JTF-SWA) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for a temporary assignment in support of Operation Southern Watch. In July 2004, she took command of the A-10 equipped 354th Fighter Squadron, and was subsequently deployed to Afghanistan under Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, where she employed weapons in combat for the first time. In 2005, McSally and her squadron were awarded the David C. Shilling Award, given by the Air Force Association for the best aerospace contribution to national defense.

During a Fox TV interview last week, McSally was asked about Senator Rick Santorum's comment that the easing of rules allowing women into combat positions could compromise the interests of the mission because of "other types of emotions that are involved." Her no-nonsense response: "I wanted to kick him in the jimmy."

When asked about it, she told American Thinker:

"This policy change only lines up on paper what is actually happening in reality. Women are already alongside men on the front lines. It appears Senator Santorum is uninformed. It's amazing to me that we are having these discussions twenty-five years after I flew in a fighter squadron. It's an insult to those serving our country — not just the women, but also to the men to say they would become distracted and not able to focus on the mission. That is the least thing on your mind when you are under fire with your life at stake. You become a team focusing on the mission. I hope to sit down and speak with the senator when he comes here since I experienced, wrote about, and studied this issue."

That is exactly what is needed in Congress: someone who will shake up the current attitude. McSally sympathizes with those of us out there that are frustrated with Washington, D.C.

“We feel that Washington doesn't represent them. I am hoping to empower them to get involved again. I am not the type of person who will go along to get along. We may not agree on all the issues, but I hope that I will be trusted to make measured and thoughtful responses."

Her general stand on a few of the issues comes across the same way she conducted herself in battle: pragmatic and objective.

The debt, according to McSally, "has to be reined in. We can't keep spending more than we have. I am a fiscal conservative. I support a balanced budget amendment. This is not politics; it is math. There must be a measured look at what we spend our money on. We can't run the well dry."

To secure the border, "we will need to apply tactical, operational, and strategic methods. There are criminal organizations that are coming here threatening the security of our citizens. They traffic people, money, weapons, and drugs. We need an intelligence-driven operation since it is a national security issue. Look at how much we spent on this issue compared to the war in Afghanistan; it is literally a rounding error. They are both national security threats, but this one is in our neighborhood. If we can track a terrorist through the mountains of Pakistan, we can certainly track a 'drug mule' on our border."

The Second Amendment: "I am a very strong supporter of the right to bear and keep arms. It is a constitutional right. I do own my own weapon.”

States' rights or federal rights: McSally favors states' rights since "[t]he federal government has failed to do its job. It has not secured the border and has overreached with many issues. SB 1070 came about because the federal government did not secure our border. Perhaps it should be changed so that every citizen stopped by law enforcement needs to prove their citizenship. There was a definite overreach with ObamaCare. I would vote to repeal it. However, we still need to focus on bringing down the cost of health care."

National security is "still a very important issue. This is a strength of mine. As much as we need to focus on the home front and the economy, we cannot disengage from the world because it will come back to haunt us. In the Middle East there is a shift happening that affects the balance of power: a potential nuclear Iran, which we cannot tolerate, and the powers arising from the Arab Spring. These threaten our staunchest democratic ally, Israel. We must maintain our commitment and partnership with allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia."

Colonel McSally has served in the military for 26 years. She has fought for her country, fought for her constitutional rights against the Pentagon, and now wants to go to Congress to fight for the serious issues facing America and Tucson today. Although Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords will be sorely missed by many of her constituents, if they elect Martha McSally, there will still be a representative for Arizona with the same personality traits: genuine, honest, and hardworking.

I was quick to pick Susana Martinez as a rising star in the Republican Party and I think Martha McSally could be another addition to the strong female conservative bench in the GOP. She would go well with Palin, Bachmann, and Martinez.

Martha McSally's campaign website can be found here if you wish to contribute a few bucks to a American patriot running for Congress.

The Geography Of The 2012 Presidential Election

"These socialist writers look upon people in the same manner that the gardener views his trees. Just as the gardener capriciously shapes the trees into pyramids, parasols, cubes, vases, fans, and other forms, just so does the socialist writer whimsically shape human beings into groups, series, centers, sub-centers, honeycombs, labor-corps, and other variations. And just as the gardener needs axes, pruning hooks, saws, and shears to shape his trees, just so does the socialist writer need the force that he can find only in law to shape human beings. For this purpose, he devises tariff laws, relief laws, and school laws." — Frédéric Bastiat (The Law)

The geographic concentration of much of President Obama's political support in a few large Blue States and urban areas means that he could be defeated for re-election this November even while winning the popular vote. What few seem to have seriously considered so far is how daunting the present shape of the political battlefield actually is for the President on a state-by-state level, and what that means when it comes to using national tracking polls as a metric to guess who would win a Presidential election held on any given day. If you look closely enough at the numbers, it becomes clear that it is both mathematically and practically possible for the right Republican candidate to assemble a majority in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote by as much as 5%.

Let's travel back in time to 2008. Obama won the popular vote with a margin of 7.27%. He won the Electoral College 365-173. In the intervening time, the post-2010 reapportionment of seats in the House of Representatives means that, if the popular vote in 2012 were to be exactly the same, the electoral vote would instead by 359-179 thanks to population shifts over the last decade from Obama states to Republican ones.

In 2008, Obama won the popular vote by about nine and a half million votes. However, roughly 7.2 million of that margin came from huge wins in California, New York, and Illinois — states that he's going to win in pretty much any imaginable scenario. His massive margins in these states distorts the results of national polling by giving Obama a massive stash of surplus voters (equal to about 5.3% of the vote in 2008) who cannot shift a single Electoral Vote. If, instead of looking at the national vote, you look at the margins in swing states it becomes clear that the 2008 result was actually much closer than it looks at first glance.

I have an application on my iPad called the Electoral College. It allows me to play “what if” scenarios on a state by state basis.

I began by using Larry Sabato’s map of how the state by state results would look if the election were held today. Using Sabato’s prediction I come up with 181 electoral votes for the Republican candidate with 13 undecided or swing states. Now let’s look at some of those swing states based on the 2008 results.

A swing of 7,089 votes in North Carolina gives the Republican 196.

118,225 voters in Florida would give that state to the GOP, putting the count at 225. This would be very possible with Marco Rubio on the ticket

It would take only 131,112 votes to give Ohio to the Republicans, putting us at 243 for the Republican

17,264 Virginians makes it 256 for the GOP.

73,281 votes would bring Iowa into the GOP Column and increase the Electoral vote to 262

Missouri was a close call in 2008 with McCain winning by a hair’s breadth margin at 49% to 49%. The “show me state’ should go Republican based on the results of the 2010 congressional election and bring the GOP’s total to 272 enough to elect the GOP candidate.

McCain lost big in New Mexico 57%-42%), but with Susanna Martinez in the governor’s seat she may be able to turn this around and deliver 5 additional votes for the Republican.

Nevada was another big loser for McCain in 2008, but with a Republican guvnor, high unemployment, and its large amount of foreclosures another 6 votes could fall in the GOP column.

These last two states would be good, but are problematic due to the strong Hispanic vote in NM and the influence of SEIU in Nevada.

The encouraging news is that Obama will not have ACORN and others useful idiots working for him this time and he has a record to run on.

In this scenario, by the way, Obama would win with about 8.5 million more votes than the Republican nominee, giving him a victory in the popular vote of 6.57%.

Now, obviously, such a perfectly effective distribution of votes for the Republicans is unlikely even if it is mathematically possible. However, the increasing gap between the deepest of the Blue States and the Red States — Obama is actually polling better in California now than he was in 2008 — makes national polling increasingly irrelevant in a Presidential Election.

In fact, if we look at recent polling in swing states such as Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Colorado, and Pennsylvania — most of which show the President either trailing Republican challengers or ahead but with anemic numbers in the low to mid-40's — and contrast it with national polling showing Obama mostly in the lead in the mid to high 40's it becomes hard to reach any other conclusion than that the result of an election held today would be an election where Obama wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College.

The big and unasked question, as I see it, is how Obama and his supporters would react to such a defeat. If the President wins the popular vote while losing the Electoral College, will he accept the result and step aside or will he allow his supporters to attempt some sort of extra-Constitutional effort to perpetuate him in office?

I do not mean to suggest that Obama has the ability to install himself as some kind of dictator. I have complete confidence that the United States Military would, rightfully and constitutionally, refuse any such orders. Instead what I am suggesting is that, in the aftermath of a loss where he carried the popular vote, Obama's supporters would take to the streets in an effort to overturn the results via some kind of "people power" movement such as we have seen overseas in Egypt, the Ukraine, and elsewhere in recent years with the aim of either intimidating some electors into changing (or not casting) their votes or forcing the Republican candidate to concede the Presidency.

The 2012 election will be unlike any election we have since 1860, and we know what resulted from that one. I would not put anything past the committed and radical left. The Occupy movement has demonstrated that and they would get plenty of help from the media.

72 Percent Of Black Babies Born To Unwed Mothers

"But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime." — Frédéric Bastiat (The Law)

Unmarried mothers gave birth to 4 out of every 10 babies born in the United States in 2007, a share that is increasing rapidly both here and abroad, according to government figures released Wednesday.

The New York Times reports:

“Before 1970, most unmarried mothers were teenagers. But in recent years the birthrate among unmarried women in their 20s and 30s has soared — rising 34 percent since 2002, for example, in women ages 30 to 34. In 2007, women in their 20s had 60 percent of all babies born out of wedlock, teenagers had 23 percent and women 30 and older had 17 percent.

Much of the increase in unmarried births has occurred among parents who are living together but are not married, cohabitation arrangements that tend to be less stable than marriages, studies show.

The pattern has been particularly pronounced among Hispanic women, climbing 20 percent from 2002 to 2006, the most recent year for which racial breakdowns are available. Eleven percent of unmarried Hispanic women had a baby in 2006, compared with 7 percent of unmarried black women and 3 percent of unmarried white women, according to government data drawn from birth certificates.

Titled “Changing Patterns of Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States,” the report was released by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Out-of-wedlock births are also rising in much of the industrialized world: in Iceland, 66 percent of children are born to unmarried mothers; in Sweden, the share is 55 percent. (In other societies, though, the phenomenon remains rare — just 2 percent in Japan, for example.)

But experts say the increases in the United States are of greater concern because couples in many other countries tend to be more stable and government support for children is often higher.

“In Sweden, you see very little variation in the outcome of children based on marital status. Everybody does fairly well,” said Wendy Manning, a professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. “In the U.S., there’s much more disparity.”

Children born out of wedlock in the United States tend to have poorer health and educational outcomes than those born to married women, but that may be because unmarried mothers tend to share those problems.

Decades ago, pregnant women often married before giving birth. But the odds of separation and divorce in unions driven by pregnancy are relatively high. So when a woman gets pregnant, are children better off if their parents marry, cohabitate or do neither? That question is still unresolved, Dr. Manning said.

Some experts speculate that marriage or cohabitation cements financial and emotional bonds between children and fathers that survive divorce or separation, improving outcomes for children. But since familial instability is often damaging to children, they may be better off with mothers who never cohabitate or marry than with those who form unions that are later broken.

“There is no consensus on those questions,” Dr. Manning said.

In an enduring mystery, birthrates for unmarried women in the United States stabilized between 1995 and 2002 and declined among unmarried teenagers and black women. But after 2002, the overall birthrate among unmarried women resumed its steady climb. In 1940, just 3.8 percent of births were to unmarried women.

The District of Columbia and Mississippi had the highest rates of out-of-wedlock births in 2007: 59 percent and 54 percent, respectively. The lowest rate, 20 percent, was in Utah. In New York, the rate was 41 percent; in New Jersey, 34 percent; and in Connecticut, 35 percent. Sarah S. Brown, chief executive of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a nonprofit advocacy group, said sex and pregnancy were handled far too cavalierly in the United States, where rates of unplanned pregnancies, births and abortions are far higher than those of other industrialized nations.

“These trends may meet the needs of young adults,” she said, “but it’s far from clear that it’s helpful for children.”

• Childbearing by unmarried women has resumed a steep climb since 2002.
• Births to unmarried women totaled 1,714,643 in 2007, 26% more than in 2002. Nearly 4 in 10 U.S. births were to unmarried women in 2007.
• Birth rates have risen considerably for unmarried women in their twenties and over, while declining or changing little for unmarried teenagers.
• Nonmarital birth rates are highest for Hispanic women followed by black women. Rates for non-Hispanic white and Asian or Pacific Islander women are much lower.
• Most births to teenagers (86% in 2007) are nonmarital, but 60% of births to women 20–24 and nearly one-third of births to women 25–29 were nonmarital in 2007.
• Teenagers accounted for just 23% of nonmarital births in 2007, down steeply from 50% in 1970.

In an article in National Review on Line titled Why Men Are Slackers And Women Are Single Suzanne Venker writes:

“The rise of the single woman is hardly something to celebrate. She represents the culmination of a decades-long revolution that has chipped away, relentlessly and insidiously, at the traditional family unit. First it was motherhood, now it’s marriage.

Before I write more, let me be clear: There is absolutely nothing wrong with being single. Being single, by definition, is not a flaw; and it requires no justification. What is wrong is when feminists use this very purposeful trend to try and upend a centuries-old global institution that serves millions of adults — and their children — exceedingly well.

In the widely read November 2011 Atlantic cover story, entitled “All the Single Ladies,” singleton Kate Bolick declares that “it’s time to embrace new ideas about romance and family — and to acknowledge the end of traditional marriage as society’s highest ideal.” And her latest piece, published this weekend in the Wall Street Journal, is titled “For Women, Is Home Really So Sweet?” In it, Bolick compares home ownership for single women to society’s high opinion of marriage. (Hint: They’re both overrated.)

Just some articles by a frustrated woman? Hardly. Bolick’s “All the Single Ladies” — which has been “recommended” 51,000 times on Facebook — is being made into a television series. So now the young people of America will get this message crammed down their throats every week. That should make for some good partnerships down the road, don’t you think?

Indeed, Bolick is in good company — not just with Hollywood but with like-minded pontificators such as Hanna Rosin, who wrote a similar article last year called “The End of Men” – also in The Atlantic, and also widely read. The online version of this article incorporates a video in which Rosin (and her daughter) conclude, while sitting at a table opposite her son and (very emasculated) husband, that “girls are better than boys.” And we can’t forget one of the liberal media’s favorite professors, Stephanie Coontz. In an article last week in The New York Times, entitled “The M.R.S and the Ph.D.,” Coontz exalts the ascension of women and suggests they resign themselves to marrying down.

Then there are articles that aren’t so well-known — such as last month’s cover story in Boston magazine, entitled “Single by Choice.” The smaller caption reads, “This is Terri. She’s successful, happy, and at 38, just fine with never getting married. Ever.” It’s enough to make the average person think there’s something fundamentally wrong with the married state.

Which, of course, is the point.

Unlike women such as Condoleezza Rice, who quietly lead unconventional lives without a trace of resentment toward their fellow men, feminists are hell bent on changing society to accommodate them. They do this by implying the so-called rise of women is a great thing — and proof that marriage is an outdated, patriarchal institution. At an event in Washington D.C., Bolick and Rosin appear together to do just that. Rosin, in her trademark elitist and condescending fashion, had this to say: ”Having reported a lot on Christian conservatives, I can tell you they get married, like, as soon as they fall in love and, you know, it’s probably because they can’t have sex unless they’re married — which is not the case for most of us.” (Envision lots of insulting facial gestures, as well as laughter coming from the audience.) Just imagine if I were to say in a similar forum, “Yeah, you know how those Jews are.”

High-profile feminists such as Bolick, Rosin, and Coontz celebrate the ascension of women as though it were a win-win. But the fact that today more women than men get college degrees and have good jobs is nothing to smile about. ”The good news about women is accompanied by bad news about men, which also turns out to be bad news for women,” writes Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto.

The “bad news” about men is always couched in the context that men aren’t “manning up,” or doing what’s necessary to be responsible adults. Perhaps they aren’t — they’re certainly retreating from marriage, that’s for sure. The question is, why? And the answer is simple. With premarital sex a foregone conclusion and cohabitation on the rise, men live the good life with no responsibilities. Moreover, women have made it clear they don’t need a man to support them, to be happy, or even to become a mother. The result is that men become slackers.

And those so-called empowered women feminists created? Many learn, eventually, that they were cruelly misled. Millions of women find that they do, in fact, want to stay home with their babies when they’re young and therefore need a husband with a good job. But by that time, it’s too late. Their husbands have been schooled in the art of feminism just as they have and expect their wives to go to work and “pull their weight.”

And that’s just the women who were fortunate enough to find husbands in the first place. Others put off marriage indefinitely — until they decide they want a baby. Trouble is, they can’t find men who are willing to marry them.”

While Ms. Venker makes a case for why middle-class and professional women eschew marriage she glosses over the issue of the poor, especially blacks having babies out of wedlock.

There are simple arguments for why so many black women have children without marriage.

The legacy of segregation (the progressive logic goes) means blacks are more likely to attend inferior schools. This creates a high proportion of blacks unprepared to compete for jobs in today’s economy, where middle-class industrial work for unskilled laborers has largely disappeared.

The drug epidemic sent disproportionate numbers of black men to prison and crushed the job opportunities for those who served their time. Women do not want to marry men who cannot provide for their families, and welfare laws created a financial incentive for poor mothers to stay single.

Women, especially Black and Hispanic, have been able to play the welfare system game better that Tom Brady or Eli Manning play quarterback. With aid to dependent children, food stamps, the federal WIC program, Section 8 housing allowance, earned income tax credits, and Medicare they are able get by with having more babies as a source of income.

As an example, according to the California Department of Social Services, in Los Angeles County, California the state ponies up $446 per month for a child from 0-4 years and by the time they reach 15-19 the payout is $627 per month. This means that for an unwed mother with four children ages 0-4 the monthly check from the state would be $1,784 per month and by the time they reached high school age it would be $2,508 or $30,096 per year.

While this doesn’t sound like much when factored in with free health care, WIC, food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — SNAP), and other federal and state funded programs this amount can grow to a tidy sum. As another example the SNAP program will allow $793 per month for this family of 5 which amounts to another $9,516 per year. It is easy to see that with all the assistance programs available this unwed mother can receive upwards of $50,000 per year. And this is tax-free money. So, why get married to a person with no high school education who is barely able to earn $10 per hour when you can get $60,000 to $70,000 of tax free money from the government. These women have learned how to work the system very well. All they need to do is go to their local community organizer, who is an expert on the programs available in the county, and pay him some money and they will be on the gravy train.

While, as a people, we are caring and charitable, for those who have fallen on hard times through circumstances we should not be encouraging those who take advantage of the system through behavior.

Recently, President Barack Obama's education secretary Arne Duncan stated that every 26 seconds, a student drops out of high school. But things are even worse for black students; a whopping 40 percent of African-American students don't graduate from high school. These dismal statistics are creating an underclass of African-Americans who have become unemployable, while also affecting the very fibers of the black family structure.

According to a 2010 article in the San Francisco Examiner:

“More than a third of California's African American public high school students dropped out before graduation day, a startling number and one that's on the rise, according to 2009 data released Tuesday.

The 37 percent African American dropout rate, up three percentage points from the prior year, was far above that of any other ethnic subgroup. Hispanic students had the second highest rate at 27 percent.”

Can you say "achievement gap"? The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that more than a third of California's African-American public high school students dropped out before graduation day, a startling number and one that's on the rise. The 37 percent African-American dropout rate, up three percentage points from the prior year, was far above that of any other ethnic subgroup. Hispanic students had the second-highest rate at 27 percent. Locally, San Francisco cautiously celebrated a 9 percent overall dropout rate, a stark contrast to Oakland's 40 percent.

We're wondering how a high school dropout rate gets into the teen percentile. How does it go from there into the 20s? Now the dropout rate is into the 30s and well on its way to 40 percent. Corporations with such lousy returns would be made to fold. Companies that mismanaged their human resources to such an extent could not get away with this. Why is this country, especially the black community, OK with this? No words except unacceptable.

It is a known fact that children born out of wedlock (some from multiple males) and having no father figure in their lives have a much higher risk of not completing high school and continuing the circle of poverty.

Another known fact is that when the government subsidizes something we get more of it. Black and Hispanic women having multiple children out of wedlock and raising them in fatherless homes will not bode well for this republic.

While progressive politicians and activists promote more of the welfare state to retain their power and the media continues to skirt the real problem this condition will not soon end and Blacks will continue to remain at the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

Occupy Your House

“The Left...views the world not as a conflict between good and evil but between white and black, male and female, and rich and poor... As a general proposition, subject to exceptions that accompany all generalizations, the Left has considerably more compassion for groups (racial, ethnic, socioeconomic and sexual groups it favors) than for individuals.” — Dennis Prager

News Busters reports that Judge on CBS Prime Time Drama Cheers ‘Amazing’ Occupy Protesters: ‘I Salute Them’

“Occupy Wall Street earned a shout-out Sunday night on a CBS drama, the kind of Hollywood affirmation the Tea Party could never dream of receiving. “Before we begin,” a judge announced in a Chicago courtroom on The Good Wife, “I want to take a few minutes to talk about something that is happening a mere one hundred yards from this courthouse: Occupy Wall Street!”

“Judge Charles Abernathy,” played by Denis O’Hare, continued to pay tribute to the leftist cause célèbre: “Yes, these amazing young men and women are braving 36-degree weather, with the grit in their eyes of a shared cause, and all to challenge the system. And I, for one, I salute them.”

The outburst came in a scene, but unconnected to it, of the judge overseeing a lawsuit against a software company which sold data-mining software to Syria which used it to identify and “disappear” American protesters.

Later in the February 19 episode, “Live from Damascus,” the judge loudly sniffles, leading him to explain: “Over lunch I went to offer moral support to Occupy Wall Street and it’s because of the pepper spray.”

Have the Chicago police ever pepper-sprayed the Occupy protesters?

Almost exactly a year ago (February 22, 2011), the show gave prime time legitimacy to the presumption the Tea Party is racist as a lawyer in a courtroom tried to discredit an expert witness (Gary Cole as Sarah Palin supporter “Kurt McVeigh”) who testified against a since-exonerated black defendant, by demanding he admit he’s “a member of the Tea Party.” The lawyer asserts “it is our contention that my client’s prosecution was racist,” citing McVeigh’s “membership in a racist organization,” namely the Tea Party. Video:”

For full disclosure I do not watch this show and never have so I am basing the above report on the News Busters report. You can watch the actual video of the scene by going to the News Buster link.

The New York Post has a very revealing investigative piece this week on the fallout of one offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement – “Occupy Our Homes” – and the effect it had on one individual’s life. The ostensible goal of the project was to take control of properties foreclosed on by the banks and convert them for use by the homeless. The proposal originally attracted the support of Wise Ahadzi, owner of a property in East New York who had been unable to make his mortgage payments and moved his family to a lower rent apartment while he sought to sort things out with the bank. Occupiers proposed that they would fix up the place for Mr. Ahadzi in exchange for taking part, and he agreed. They busted in and soon installed the family of Alfredo Carrasquillo, a homeless man. So popular was the move that a Democratic member of the city council came to pose for a photo op with the new tenant.

So, how did that work out for Wise Ahadzi? The pictures speak for themselves.

“Last week, Wise Ahadzi opened the door to the house he still owns, 702 Vermont Street in East New York.

Inside is a war zone. The walls are torn down, the plumbing is ripped out and the carpeting has been plucked from the floor. It’s like walking through a ribcage.

Garbage, open food containers and Ahadzi’s possessions are tossed haphazardly around the house.

“This is where my kitchen was,” Ahadzi says. There is no sink, no refrigerator and no counter space. Instead there are dirty dishes piled high waiting for a dip in three large buckets of putrid water that serve as the dishwashing system.”

The house is now in such a condition that the owner sees it as being fit for nothing other than being condemned. Even if he could get the mortgage situation straightened out, he couldn’t move his family back in. The property is destroyed.

This really looks like a fitting legacy to a “movement” which never had any leadership, never identified the goals it sought to achieve and attracted some of the worst elements imaginable. As the article goes on to note, large numbers of “participants” in the area of Mr. Ahadzi’s home were never even involved as activists. They were simply castoffs from the local homeless shelters who heard that there was a place to get free food and decent shelter. There was no oversight of these “programs” which had such lofty sounding goals but no clue as to how they might be effectively implemented.

Ahadzi, 28, was the man Occupy didn’t want the public to know about. He owned the Vermont house but was forced to leave in 2009 when he couldn’t make the mortgage payments to Bank of America.

The single father knew he couldn’t raise his two girls, Kwazha, 9, and Imani, 3, with the threat of eviction hanging over him. They found a lower-cost rental in Brownsville while Ahadzi negotiated with the bank to get his house back.

The Post report continues:

“But instead of helping Ahadzi, Occupy cast Carrasquillo as the man to move in, because he was a homeless advocate some of the members knew.

During the December event, Ahadzi was pulled aside and made assurances by Barron and others — we know your predicament, we’ll make it better.

Ahadzi was content with that answer for a while, until it was obvious Occupy wasn’t interested in him.

They didn’t seem interested in the house, either. In January, The Post found squatters in the house instead of the family.

“They only stay here sometimes,” a protester explained. “There’s not enough room for the kids.”

Ahadzi thought about calling the police, until the embarrassed Occupy movement promised him that they’d repair the house and leave.

Two weeks have already gone by since without any progress. Occupy hasn’t even offered to pay him for the damages.

They tore down many interior walls but did not put them back up. A neighbor said that mold corroded one wall, but a complete gutting of the house was unnecessary.

Even in this condition, protesters are still squatting on the floors, cooking using a Bunsen burner and walking around guided by candlelight when a generator is not up and running.

Their efforts have actually made the neighborhood worse — because what used to be an empty house is now a hovel of squatters and probably should be condemned.

Things have gotten so bad that Barron, who once praised the movement, said that Occupy has worn out its welcome.

“The bottom line is that they have to leave,” he said.

Neighbors, who initially welcomed the ragtag bunch into the area, now stay away. Local Doyle Coleman tried to get other homeowners on the street to participate in a street cleanup with the Occupiers, but they all just said, “I don’t want to get involved.”

Another neighbor stood across the street from the house and shook his head, imagining how extensive the damages were inside considering the revolving cast of characters living inside. “It must be in shambles,” he said.”

Wize Ahadzi is no longer such a fan of the Occupy movement. His former home stands as a testament to the destruction which was left behind after the police finally cleared the park. Perhaps if more of the Big Apple’s residents get to see this story it will serve as a reminder for this spring.

Since the Occupy group does not support any political candidates, Democrats are free to ignore Occupy — which many moderate members are happy to do. Without any leaders, the occupation’s small work groups and offshoots are also just too unpredictable and risky to support.

The 2012 election, in fact, is shaping up to be the inverse of the 2010 midterms. In those congressional races, Republican candidates mostly had to embrace and praise the Tea Party movement to avoid incurring its wrath. In 2012, Democrats, especially in swing states, will likely be spending their time making sure they’re not too closely associated with the Occupiers.

Occupy promises a return to larger protests in the spring, under the general banner of “raising awareness about inequality.”

But is any American really unaware of inequality? Does anyone need to be told that more people need jobs, that the middle class and the poor are suffering?

With banners and signs and slogans, “Occupy” raised awareness of the inequities of foreclosures. Then they left a house in Brooklyn in a wretched condition, with an owner wondering who’s going to clean up the mess.

Perhaps the producers of The Good Wife should have visited Mr. Ahadzi’s house before airing this episode. Once again the Hollywood media is pushing the radical progressive agenda and ignoring the facts.

Obama’s Media

"Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands?" — Thomas Jefferson

As the presidential campaign begins to heat up and the Republican candidates continue to beat each other in their quest for the nomination Obama is gathering his forces, especially those in the media. This includes journalists, opinion writers, TV talking heads, and Hollywood fellow travelers.

For some Washington reporters and media execs, cheering their team from the sidelines just isn’t good enough: Tugging on a red, white and blue Team Obama jersey is the answer.

That’s the case for a whopping 19 journalists and media executives, including five from the Washington Post and three each from ABC and CNN, who’ve gone into the administration or center-left groups supporting the president.

The Washington Examiner ran an article last week stating:

“Those inside the administration hit 14 this month when the Post’s Stephen Barr joined the Labor Department. That’s a record, say some revolving door watchers, and could even be much higher: The Post reports that “dozens” of former journalists have joined the administration, although Washington Secrets couldn’t verify that tally.

Many are in communications and speech writing offices, most prominently Jay Carney, the president’s spokesman who ran Time’s Washington bureau, and husband to ABC’s Claire Shipman. Some joined as the news business collapsed, many to finally voice their politics, and others, notably former Transportation spokeswoman Jill Zuckman, because she liked her future boss, Secretary Ray LaHood, a rare Republican in the administration. That relationship rocked: LaHood broke through the lower-tier Cabinet P.R. ceiling to become one of the most well-known Transportation secretaries ever. She had worked for the Chicago Tribune.

The revolving door isn’t a surprise to critics of the media and Obama. “The number of reporters going into the Obama administration merely confirms what I knew and what most conservatives long believed,” said Noam Neusner, himself one of the few reporters hired as a Bush speech writer. “There is a vast supply of liberals in newsrooms, they are very happy to support Obama administration policies if they can get hired and they barely hide their ideology in the way they cover the news.” Neusner, who I worked with at U.S. News, said that he too might have been guilty of a pro-Bush bias, but said correctly: “My editors and colleagues were surprised to hear that I was a Republican.”

A former GOP Capitol Hill and cabinet spokesman added, “It’s frustrating to see so many reporters that had relationships with trusted sources give up their ‘impartiality’ and start playing for the other side. It does show that the game is stacked in favor of the other side when most reporters still working in their profession remain silent.”

Stephen Hess, a presidential and journalism scholar at the Brookings Institution, said reporters can be “conflicted” when they trade places. “On the other hand,” he added, “reporters going back to journalism after a stint in government are always better reporters in that they now understand how government really works.”

With the so-called journalists getting on the Obama train it was time for the campaigner-in chief to get out to Hollywood and bring the actors and movie moguls on board. Of course he is doing this with your money.

Last week he spent three days in southern California dipping into the coffers of the useful idiots in the film industry with his $35,000 per plate dinners. People like George Clooney, Barbara Streisand, and Steven Spielberg were quick to dole out the cash for these events.

Obama also ventured up the Pacific Northwest where there are no lack cash-rich lefties ready to contribute to his campaign. John Hayward writes in Human Events:

“The Oval Office sits empty, as President Obama invests most of his time in running for re-election. Even his “2013 budget proposal” was nothing more than a campaign document. Any resemblance between that proposal and a serious attempt to perform the duties of governing was purely coincidental. And remember, his previous budgets were equally absurd – not just controversial, but obviously impossible to pass, and packed with delusional assumptions and big-spending wish lists.

Obama also spends a great deal of time on tours to promote D.O.A. legislation he introduced solely for the purpose of demonizing its opponents, like his $450 billion “jobs bill,” which was almost as silly as his budget proposals.

Today finds the President in Seattle for a few more big-bucks events, as reported by the Seattle Times:

President Obama plans to make a cash withdrawal from his base of wealthy Democratic donors in the Seattle area Sunday, popping in for two fundraisers as part of a West Coast campaign swing.

No public events have been announced for the president's visit, but donors who pony up thousands of dollars can get up close and personal.

First up is an exclusive brunch at the Medina home of former Microsoft executive Jon Shirley.

The event costs $35,800 per couple and 100 people are expected to attend, according to a Democratic Party official.

Then Obama will head to a larger fundraiser at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle, with tickets starting at $100 for balcony seats and up to $7,500 for VIP seating and a receiving-line photo with the president, according to event invitations. Up to 400 people are expected at that event, which will include a lunch catered by chef Tom Douglas and a performance by the Robert Cray Band.

This comes on the heels of another $38,500-per-plate extravaganza in California yesterday. Via Twitter, Mark Knoller of CBS News is keeping score: “In Seattle, President Obama does 2 more fund-raisers - bringing 3-day total to 8 & total since filing for re-election to 92.” Obama filed for re-election on April 4, 2011. That’s 92 fundraisers in a little over ten months.”

National elections are expensive, and even with all the advantages of incumbency, a President seeking re-election would be obliged to spend some time raising money. Byzantine campaign finance laws increase the amount of time a candidate must devote to such activities. But at some point, the amount of time spent on campaigning and fund-raising becomes excessive - especially when coupled with a willingness to twist the duties of the President’s office, such as providing leadership on the federal budget, into campaign tools.

It’s also food for thought when assessing the viability of various Republican campaign strategies against the President. No one is going to be able to out-spend him. In fact, the ability to prevail despite a massive imbalance in campaign spending should be a top item of interest in any Republican resume.”

And then of course there is the case of Media Matters, the left-web site that promotes Obama and his radical agenda. The Daily Caller has been running a series of articles on Media Matters’ financial backers and how they are attempting to demonize conservatives.

Media Matters has raised millions of dollars from major liberal foundations since its inception, benefiting from heavyweight organizations like the Tides Foundation and George Soros' Open Society Institute.

A report Friday in The Daily Caller detailed the sources of about $29 million in Media Matters donations dating back to 2003. Though much of the group's finances are secret, the $29 million represents more than half of Media Matters' total funding in that time.

The left-wing Tides Foundation accounted for $4.38 million of the sum. According to the Caller, more than half of that contribution was in place before the Media Matters launch in 2004. The Open Society Institute also donated more than $1 million, in installments over three years.

Funding for the liberal media advocacy group comes from dozens of other organizations. Among them, according to the report, are the anti-war MoveOn.org, the Barbra Streisand Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Joyce Foundation. President Obama sat on the board of the latter until 2002.

According to the Caller, Media Matters has received nearly $1 million from the Ford Foundation since 2010 — even though the group reportedly was planning to run an ad against Ford as part of its campaign against Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs when he was with CNN, because Ford was advertising on his show.

This brings me to the point I want to make concerning the involvement of the media, especially the film industry, in progressive, left-wing politics.

Back in the mid-1980s I took several courses in film making believing these courses would help me with my presentation skills. During these courses we viewed and then discussed films like The Red Balloon, Battleship Potemkin, Olympia, and Triumph of the Will.

The Red Balloon demonstrated the use of a simple object in a film to draw the viewers’ attention to the adventures of a young boy as he journeyed the streets of Paris. The 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin, by Sergei Eisenstaedt, presents a dramatized version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers of the Tsarist regime. It was the first film to use cut-aways and inserts such as close-ups, a broken pair of eyeglasses, a baby carriage bouncing down the stairs, and a dead child, to invoke feelings for the demonstrators being chased down by Tsarist troops.

Olympia and the Trump of the Will were documentary and propaganda films made by the Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Olympia was made in 1938 and depicted the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. It was the first documentary feature film of the Olympic Games ever made. Many advanced motion picture techniques, which later became industry standards but which were groundbreaking at the time, were employed — including unusual camera angles, smash cuts, extreme close-ups, placing tracking shot rails within the bleachers, and the like. The techniques employed are almost universally admired, but the film is controversial due to its political context. Nevertheless, the film appears on many lists of the greatest films of all-time, including Time magazine's "All-Time 100 Movies.

Triumph of the Will was a pure propaganda film. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. The film contains excerpts from speeches given by various Nazi leaders at the Congress, including portions of speeches by Adolf Hitler, interspersed with footage of massed party members. Hitler commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening titles. The overriding theme of the film is the return of Germany as a great power, with Hitler as the True German Leader who will bring glory to the nation.

Triumph of the Will was released in 1935 and rapidly became one of the best-known examples of propaganda in film history. Riefenstahl's techniques, such as moving cameras, the use of long focus lenses to create a distorted perspective, aerial photography, and revolutionary approach to the use of music and cinematography, have earned Triumph recognition as one of the greatest films in history. Riefenstahl won several awards, not only in Germany but also in the United States, France, Sweden, and other countries. The film was popular in the Third Reich and elsewhere, and has continued to influence movies, documentaries, and commercials to this day.

So with all this in mind I am composing a letter from Fräulein Riefenstahl to Barack Obama with some advice on how to dazzle the electorate with his message of hope and change.

Schatzi, it's been over a year since I last wrote you. Please forgive me. It's been so hot here I can barely stand to touch the keyboard. Not that I don't appreciate the green energy projects you funded to cool off this place, but dear, you know even with the trillions you spent, those projects just keep going under. Yes, I know it helped put billions in the pockets of your donors, but hell is not freezing over you know and we could use energy for the air conditioners.

Anyway, I forced myself to endure the scorching temperatures and pitchforks to congratulate you on those brilliant HHS regulations forcing people to fund insurance coverage for abortions, sterilizations and birth control against their consciences.

Darling Adolf just loved to do that sort of thing. Remember — are you old and well-read enough to remember? He figured out that if he could get people to operate against their conscience on small things, big things like Judenrein (Clean out the Jews) would be easier. Of course, that was just a start.

Martin Bormann said it just right: "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable." For the party to rule, he said the Churches' influence in the leadership of the people "must absolutely and finally be broken." He was taking about the Nazi party, but heavens, Progressives, Democrats, and Nazis — state control is state control.

So, this move by your Administration is just a great first step. You had all the social justice crowd in the church supporting you, and now those wicked bishops — how many divisions do they have anyway? — had to step in to try to put a stop to this.

Well, the match is set.

On your side you have some real geniuses. I mean all the media is helping you sell the fairytale that you are battling people who want to force women to forego contraceptives. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a real feather in your cap; arguing that all women deserve free contraceptives and that religious institutions shouldn't be imposing their values on their employees is, you should pardon the expression, pure Göbbels. And you can count on the press to let her get away with this big lie. After all isn’t Media Matters, MSNBC, and NBC the same as Der Strümer?

The media want to replace old fashioned religion with civic religion as much as you and I do. So, some Catholics have and continue to threaten to shut down their social welfare services rather than comply with such things? Great! The sooner the people learn that the state is the provider of all things, the better — for you and your party. Of course, not necessarily better for them or their country, but that's not the point, is it?

I suppose you have some other good ideas in the wings at HHS. Off the top of my head here are some ideas for you: Make public schools serve pork and require all kids to eat it; force Christian Scientists to see physicians and take medicine; make the Mormon Tabernacle Choir admit Moslems; ban religious circumcisions of males; draft the Amish into the military; outlaw Lutheran lutefisk parties and bake sales.

My goodness, the possibilities once you control the levers of power! And what could possibly give you more power than controlling healthcare delivery? Imagine the rake offs, too. Plastic surgeons want liposuction and botox coverage? Let them kick in to your party. Somebody's poor mom is too old for treatment, cross your palm with silver and a hospital bed becomes available. Why am I telling you this, you of all people? I mean Mr. President Chicago Way, right?

And then your opponents are playing this rather stupidly. Letting you and the press frame this as a women's rights issue, not a Constitutional issue. (Is it just gossip or is it true that Harvard Law School where you attended and the University Of Chicago Law School where you were a lecturer, are mortified? Who cares? That Constitution is so old and updated anyway. Ask Justice Ginsburg, even she's not crazy about it.) Maybe next year you can wait until Congress is in recess and replace it with something newer from Zimbabwe. Well, you certainly don't need me to advise you on how to destroy religion or the Constitution.

I was delighted to see how you are reviving the Sturmabteilung. Of course, you can't credit us — we all discussed it here and understand. Calling it a Truth Team, a "grassroots communications team" will go over much better, but, schatzi, we all know where you got that idea. The explanation is another bit of brilliant propaganda: "The goal is to ensure that when Republicans attack President Obama's record, grassroots supporters can take ownership of the campaign and share the facts with the undecided voters in their lives."

I mean even Michelle Obama's Mirror calls it the "SS. See something, Say something." I think she means it sarcastically but check out the great logos she's come up for the Truth Team!! We couldn't do better and we tried in between KZ camp roastings.

She didn't even get to Project Narwhal, a data-mining outreach operation designed to snare even more low information voters than the media can rope in.

And it's working on ill-educated single women, who'd apparently gladly give up their right to worship as they choose in order to get someone else to pick up their contraception tab, never realizing they're giving up something for nothing, because there really is no free lunch.

I figure a couple years of this and there will be no private insurance companies because they'll be run out of business, or employer provided health insurance because it's all going to be too expensive. And then you'll have the entire country in the palm of your hand. Don’t forget Adolph’s Germany had free health care, except for Jews and other untermensch.

If I had a heart, liebchen, it would be singing right now.

P.S. I keep meaning to tell you — when you tilt your chin skyward like that, you remind me so much of the Italian heart throb Benito.

Obama’s Propaganda Truth Squad

"A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another, and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government." — John Stuart Mill

Last night I watched several films on the Turner Classic Movies channel. All the films I viewed focused on the Soviet Union and dated from 1940 to 1965. The first film I watched was Doctor Zhivago, the classic directed by David Lean. The film, based on the book of the same name by Boris Pasternak, depicts Russia from the time prior to the 1917 revolution through the period of the civil war between the forces loyal to the Czar (Whites) and the Communists (Reds).

The film shot in stunning color still captivated me with its wonderful shots of the Russian winter and spring (shot in Canada), its elaborate costuming, and its haunting musical score by Maurice Jarre. Who can forget those magnificent scenes of the fields of daffodils and birch trees and those scenes of the Russian winter where you can feel the bitter cold?

I first saw this film in 1967 in Hamilton, Ontario when my wife and I paid a visit to my Canadian relatives with my two-year old son. I always remember having to stand for “God Save the Queen” prior to the start of the film in the Canadian movie theater.

The next film I watched was the farcical comedy Comrade X staring Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr. The story is about an American reporter smuggling news out of Soviet Moscow who blackmailed into helping a beautiful Communist leave the country. McKinley B. "Mac" Thompson (Clark Gable), American reporter in Moscow, smuggles out uncensored news under the alias "Comrade X," but hotel valet Vanya discovers his secret. Vanya fears for the safety of his daughter Golubka ("Theodore" – played by Hedy Lamarr) and blackmails Mac into helping her leave the country. Mac is happier about his task once he meets lovely Theodore, but can he convince her of his sincerity? The anti-communist humor becomes alternately grim and farcical.

While not a “classic” film it was fun with its satirical humor depicting the evils of Soviet Communism and life in the Soviet Union under the tyranny of Stalin. The film ends with Gable and Lamarr in the United States watching a ball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds with Lamarr (once a dedicated Communist) jumping for joy when the Dodgers beat the “Reds.”

The third film was real humdinger of a 1943 Communist propaganda film called Mission to Moscow. The movie, starring Walter Huston, was made in response to a request by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was one of the movies famously targeted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It chronicles the experiences of the second American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies.

Mission to Moscow is a book by the former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph E. Davies published by Simon and Schuster in 1941. It was adapted into a film directed by Michael Curtiz in 1943.

The movie, starring Walter Huston, was made in response to a request by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was one of the movies famously targeted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It chronicles the experiences of the second American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies. The movie covers the political machinations in Moscow just before the start of the war and presents Stalin's Russia in a very favorable light. So much so, that the movie was cited years later by the House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC) and was largely responsible for the screenwriter, Howard Koch being blacklisted.

The movie chronicles Ambassador Davies' impressions of the Soviet Union, his meetings with Stalin, and his overall opinion of the Soviet Union and its ties with the United States. It is made in faux-documentary style, beginning with Davies meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss his new appointment as United States ambassador to the Soviet Union. It continues to show the Davies' family's trip by boat to Moscow, with stops in Europe

The movie chronicles Ambassador Davies' impressions of the Soviet Union, his meetings with Stalin, and his overall opinion of the Soviet Union and its ties with the United States. It is made in faux-documentary style, beginning with Davies meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss his new appointment as United States ambassador to the Soviet Union. It continues to show the Davies' family's trip by boat to Moscow, with stops in Europe.

Davies is shown witnessing the famous show trials conducted by Stalin in the 1930s (known as the Moscow Trials), which are portrayed as trials of Fifth Columnists working for Germany and Japan.

The voice-overs continue throughout the film, interspersing storyline with Davies' opinions. The basis of the film's narrative focuses on the journey of Davies and his family. First, their physical journey from the United States to the Soviet Union. And, second, their less tangible journey from skeptics of communism and the Soviet Union into converts and enthusiasts. The narrative of the movie and the book are almost identical.

Mission to Moscow was the first pro-Soviet Hollywood film of its time and was followed by others, including Samuel Goldwyn's The North Star (1943), MGM’s Song of Russia (1944), United Artists’ Three Russian Girls (1943), Columbia’s The Boy from Stalingrad (1943) and Counter-Attack (1945).

It was Roosevelt himself who approved the creation of the film version of Mission to Moscow, even meeting with Davies several times (July, October, and November of 1942 and March 1943) during the film's production and discussing its progress.

As part of his contract with Warner Brothers, Davies had absolute right of control over the script, and could veto any dialogue not to his liking.

During production, Office of War Information officials reviewed screenplay revisions and prints of the film and commented on them. By reviewing the scripts and prints, OWI officials exercised authority over Mission to Moscow, ensuring that it promoted the "United Nations" theme. An administration official advised the film's producers to offer explanations for the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the Red Army's invasion of Finland. After reading the final script, in November 1942 the OWI expressed its hope that Mission to Moscow would "make one of the most remarkable pictures of this war" and "a very great contribution to the war information program."

The OWI report on Mission to Moscow concluded that it would:

“..be a most convincing means of helping Americans to understand their Russian allies. Every effort has been made to show that Russians and Americans are not so very different after all. The Russians are shown to eat well and live comfortably, which will be a surprise to many Americans.^[6] The leaders of both countries desire peace and both possess a blunt honesty of address and purpose. One of the best services performed by this picture is the presentation of Russian leaders, not as wild-eyed madmen, but as far-seeing, earnest, responsible statesmen. They have proved very good neighbors, and this picture will help to explain why, as well as to encourage faith in the feasibility of post-war cooperation”

Government information specialists were equally enthusiastic about the completed print. Judging it "a magnificent contribution" to wartime propaganda, the OWI believed the picture would "do much to bring understanding of Soviet international policy in the past years and dispel the fears which many honest persons have felt with regard to our alliance with Russia." That was particularly so since "the possibility for the friendly alliance of the Capitalist United States and the Socialist Russia is shown to be firmly rooted in the mutual desire for peace of the two great countries."

The movie, made during World War II, showed the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin in an extremely positive light. Completed in late April 1943, the film was, in the words of Robert Buckner, the film's producer, "an expedient lie for political purposes, glossily covering up important facts with full or partial knowledge of their false presentation." It whitewashed the Moscow trials, rationalized Moscow's participation in the Nazi-Soviet Pact and its unprovoked invasion of Finland, and portrayed the Soviet Union as a non-totalitarian state that was moving towards the American democratic model, a Soviet Union committed to internationalism. There was no mention of the death by starvation of a million Ukrainians due to collectivization of their farms nor the partition of Poland under Stalin.

The book was vague on the guilt or innocence of defendants in the Moscow trials, but the final screenplay portrayed the defendants as undeniably guilty. It also showed the purges as an attempt by Stalin to rid his country of pro-German fifth columnists. The fifth columnists are described in the film as acting on behalf of Germany and Japan. The film even contains "a quarter-hour dedicated to arguing that Leon Trotsky was a Nazi agent."

In the film, Davies proclaims at the end of the trial scene: “Based on twenty years’ trial practice, I’d be inclined to believe these confessions.”

Also, there are many anachronisms. For example, the trial with Nikolai Bukharin and Mikhail Tukhachevsky are depicted as occurring at the same time, but in reality the trial with Bukharin was two years after the execution of Tukhachevsky. Tukhachevsky and Tymoshenko are marshals at the same time, but Tukhachevsky was executed in 1937 and Tymoshenko became marshal of the USSR in 1940.

Mission to Moscow has been "universally despised" by critics. However, there have been a few notable exceptions. The critic for the New York Times, future McCarthy opponent Bosley Crowther a useful idiot, found the film's attempts to rehabilitate Stalin believable:

“Based entirely on the personal observations reported by Mr. Davies in his book, it will obviously prove offensive to those elements which have challenged his views. Particularly will it anger the so-called Trotskyites with its visual re-enactment of the famous "Moscow trials". For it puts into the record for millions of moviegoers to grasp an admission that the many "purged" generals and other leaders were conspirators in a plot.”

Similarly, Leonard Maltin, another useful idiot, gave the film three and a half stars.

Mission to Moscow was not a commercial success. Although Warner Brothers spent $250,000 advertising the film before its release on April 30, 1943, the company lost around $600,000 overall at the final accounting. Mission to Moscow's numerous factual inaccuracies and outright false portrayals of Soviet leaders and events resulted in criticism from those on both the left and the right of the political spectrum. According to Jesse Walker of Reason Magazine, "it would be a terrible movie even if its politics weren't so repulsive: It's stiffly acted, poorly plotted, padded with stock footage, and just generally clumsy. But it's a must for fans of propaganda kitsch."

The House Committee on Un-American Activities would later cite Mission to Moscow as one of the three noted examples of pro-Soviet films made by Hollywood, the other two being The North Star and Song of Russia. It's been called "unquestionably the most blatant piece of pro-Stalinist propaganda ever offered by the American mass media."

In 1950, the film became an object of attention by members of Congress, who saw it as pro-Soviet propaganda. Davies was largely silent on his role in the film, though he did submit a letter to the House Committee on Un-American Activities Committee (HCUA) in 1947. Called to testify under oath before Congress, Jack Warner at first claimed that the film was made at the request of Davies, who with the approval of FDR had asked Warner Brothers to make the film (this version of the facts was confirmed by Davies' letter as well). Warner later recanted this version, stating that Harry Warner first read Mission to Moscow and then contacted Davies to discuss movie rights. [Source: Wikipedia]

While watching this film I wavered from anger to laughing. The anger was due to the ignorance and lies pushed on the audience by Davies and the filmmakers. By 1943 the American people had been given plenty of evidence as to the tyranny and cruelty of the Stalin regime. This film flew in the face of all historical facts known at the time. Only a useful idiot or fellow traveler could have possibly bought into the films message. Yet the American Communist Party thought it was great.

The laugh ability stemmed from the corny lines and Soviet archival propaganda films used throughout the film to show the wonderful, happy workers, the stores filled with consumer goods, the dams and hydroelectric plants, and the wheat fields with giant harvesting machines working in tandem to bring the crop while people were starving in Moscow and Leningrad. What a farce of propaganda this film was.

Of course at the time the western allies were building a case to support the Soviet Union in the war against Germany. I can understand that. But the heavy-handed manipulation of historical facts was a farce.

Now we get to the point of this blog — the Obama Truth Squads and their indoctrination of our school children. They are just like the tactics used by the Young Communist League and Hitler Youth.

The left loves to talk about how America has been historically guilty of it. Every time a kid stands up, puts his hand over his heart, and recites the Pledge of Allegiance, he is being manipulated to love this country of ours, overshadowing the past American imperialist and human rights crimes that kids should be focused on.

And the indoctrination doesn't end there, they claim. Once these apple pie-loving robots leave the secondary schools, they continue their right-wing education on the airwaves of talk radio, where independent instructors are hired by private companies to compensate for the learning that they fail to get in those state-sponsored universities. Poor Joe Six-pack, don'tcha know, didn't have the benefit of learning the truths of the world from a college professor whose "coming-of-age" years could best be described as a montage of group sex and psychedelic acid trips set to "Time of the Season" by The Zombies.

Yet when educational institutions are systematically teaching their young children to chant phrases supporting Barack Obama's political agenda — well, there's just no harm in that. Schoolchildren singing in support of the notion of "spreading the wealth around": "Hooray, Mr. President! We honor your great plans to make this country's economy number one again!" Children too young to know the meaning or implications of Obama's proposed "change" involving expansive government infrastructure, yet creepily singing: "Obama's gonna change it, Obama's gonna lead 'em, we're gonna change it, and rearrange it." And most recently, children innocently singing the “nonpartisan phrase” "Who do we know is the man? Barack Obama is our man! He's our man, yes he can!"

All this, though it's all innocent in the eyes of the left. After all, don't you remember the schoolchildren singing: "Who's the greatest in the land? Why, Bush, of course, he's our man!" You don't? It never happened? Oh well, that doesn't matter. Because now Barack Obama is president, and you're just supposed to support him.

Of course, Talk Radio U. teaches those conservative robots to be wary about schoolchildren being uniformly instructed to sing praises to the president. Sure, Barack Obama takes opportunities to pitch increased federal education spending to schoolchildren in hopes they might get their archaic old parents on the trolley with the whole "hope and change" thing. But that doesn't mean he's trying to charge their thoughts with his brand of politics. No big deal, right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is manipulation of the highest order — indoctrination meant to support the politicians and positions of the radical left. And it's evolving. It's not just in the mainstream media anymore. It's not just in the public schools. It's soon to be on every social network — the greatest propaganda campaign ever tweeted. It is just described as "grassroots communication."

ABC News reports:

The Obama campaign is today beginning a new effort to enlist and educate at least 2 million supporters for a "grassroots communications team" they're calling the Truth Team.

"The goal is to ensure that when Republicans attack President Obama's record, grassroots supporters can take ownership of the campaign and share the facts with the undecided voters in their lives," the campaign said in a statement.

Of course, grassroots implies an initiative by the people, bottom-up, and free of top-down influence, which is a curious description considering that this is actually an Obama campaign initiative. But anyway, here's how this unapologetically works. A nonpartisan, independent reader comes across this article. He reads in this post something that doesn't exactly paint Obama in a good light. Better do some fact-checking, he thinks. He goes to an Obama Truth Team outlet, like Media Maters or Move On.Org, online, saying, "I heard that Barack Obama wants children to take the political ideology they're learning at school home to challenge their parents' ideas." The millions of Obama's trained Truth experts, fed its "truth" by the ruling political regime and eerily reminiscent of the Ministry of Truth in the dystopian novel 1984, reply, "Of course not. That's just a conservative lie meaning to dress our administration with the trappings of totalitarianism." This is similar to the way the American Communist Party whitewashed the tyranny of Stalin through the 40’s. 50’s, and 60’s and the education campaign of the Nazis.

The Nazi policies towards young people could be viewed as one of the most successful aspects of Nazi Germany. This is because of a variety of reasons. The Nazis took advantage of the need for German youth groups and used what teenagers wanted to slip in Nazi ideals, took over the education system to portray Nazi views, and used the school system to glorify war; they also often alienated children from their parents. However it did have its flaws as there were several groups of youths who opposed Hitler such as the "Swing Movement" and the "Edelweiss Pirates."

The Hitler Youth group played a major role in Nazi control of youths especially in 1939 when it became compulsory to attend. The Nazis took what the children wanted such as group activities, hiking, camping and singing and added in extra activities such as marching, learning about Nazi policies and practicing military exercises. Many of the members were merely drawn to the youth group due to the leisure opportunities it offered and some just did not have a choice as other organizations were shut down and made illegal.

As the Nazis wanted to control each aspect of a child's life they realized that education played a very important role. They altered textbooks to include Nazi history and also Nazi views of History. Students were taught about the injustice of German government and how the Jews were slowly taking over. The National Socialist party also managed to glorify the military in each school subject. They also made sure that the students had to study race and ideology every day.

As the Nazis needed to control each aspect of a child's life to have full hold on the child they realized that it was a necessity to control a child's home or family life, in many cases this meant isolating a child from his/her family. It became increasingly common in Germany for the children of the household to be much more pro-Nazi than their parents. This is because the children grew up being controlled by Nazi forces and therefore found such things as routine household checks normal, whereas older family members found it an invasion of privacy. This often resulted in family disputes and caused unsettledness. This was also caused by the fact that the Nazi party always expected to be put before everything, even before your family.

Of course, I link evidence above of Obama doing this very thing, and the horse's mouth should absolve me. But that doesn't matter. Why do any thinking for yourself when the Obama's Truth Team can do it for you?

There is a well-known maxim that goes: "A lie, told often enough, becomes truth." And with millions of government-sanctioned propaganda distributors charged with taking the government's message to various social media in today's world, it can spread millions upon millions of lies each day. It seems that technology has vastly improved the efficiency with which an ambitious and power-hungry government can disperse the lies it disguises as "truth."

Every day millions of parents trundle their children off to the public school system for 6 to 8 hours each day believing they are getting an education and not worrying about them as the schools take control of their lives. In fact study after study and test score after test score shows that they are not being education for all the money being spent. They are being indoctrinated with left-wing ideology that contradicts our founding fathers, history, and Constitution. They are learning about class warfare, global warming, green energy, how we raped the Native Americans, how we stole the Southwest from Mexico, and other left-wing clap-trap.

They are being force feed unhealthy food by government inspectors and incompetent and pervert teachers are protected by the union. They are taken to left-wing demonstration and taught how unfair capitalism and free enterprise is. They are indoctrinated in atheism, homosexuality, and transgenders. They are forbidden under penalty of expulsion from hugging, exchanging Christmas and Valentine’s cards and that our rights stem from government not from God. As Adolph Hitler said, “Give me a child until he is seven and he is mine.”

Obama, a skilled community organizer and follower of Saul Alinsky, knows this just as Hitler and Lenin did. His supporters will fall in step with his radical agenda of transformation and one day we will wake up to the fact that he has captured the minds and souls of our children. This is why he speaks at middle and high schools where he can draw on the emotions of these young uneducated minds.

Unless we take back our public education and begin to kick out the union teachers with their radical left-wing agenda and left-wing educated academics we will be falling off the cliff as we follow the Nazis and Communists into oblivion.