The Collectivist News - Friday

The Collectivist News … excerpts from today’s issue of The Union News.

Alinskyite scapegoaters suffer from ‘displacement of rage’ … That’s what Barack Obama taught his ACORN followers in all his Community Agitator classes in Chicago. That slogan defines mob scapegoating, of course. It is an exact prescription for whipping up mobs — by race, by gender, by ethnicity, by religion. If you want to know how to whip a mob of Pakistani Taliban fascisti to whip a young girl for flirting with a young man in public, this is exactly what you do: Pick the Target, Freeze It, Personality It, and Polarize It. And notice that “the target” is no longer a human being. It’s an “It.” Try substituting the word “victim” for “target,” and you see how it works. This is exactly what the Dixiecrats did to blacks in the Jim Crow South, and what President Obama does today with capitalists who run General Motors and Wall Street. So the purported comedienne Janeane Garofolo interprets the anti-tax tea parties as obviously racist. You see, Ms. Garofolo can read minds, in spite of all the obvious decency of the tea party protesters. And Obama’s Department of Homeland Security has now pinpointed our chief terrorist danger: It’s “right-wing extremists,” including Iraq War vets coming back home. In psychiatry, scapegoating is called “displacement of rage,” and it is often said to be a low-level defense, one that comes easily to people who are already emotionally troubled or impaired. (americanthinker.com)

Bonus links:
• Summary of Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals’
• More Saul Alinsky stories: here
• ‘Rules for Radicals’ at amazon.com

Obama flunks economics, diagnosed with ‘multiple personality disorder’ … One conclusion fits the data: Obama doesn’t understand the economics of trade. There’s no coherence between his policy positions because they’re not grounded to any common base of economic thinking. For Obama, there’s no hard foundation of academic belief underlying his views on trade, just an ever-contested quicksand, shifting back and forth between the near-unanimous support for free trade by economists on one hand, and the plaintive cries of labor unions and incumbent industries on the other. Obama is trying to square the circle and come up with a world-view in which both camps are right, but it can’t be done; Adam Smith was not a mercantilist. In psychology, the way to excise a multiple personality disorder is to bring the conflicting personalities to the surface and have them battle each other until one remains. Or, maybe that’s the premise of a John Cusack movie (again, I’m Course 14, not Course 9) — whatever, the point is this: Obama is surrounded by MIT-trained economists. One of them needs to sit Obama down and tell truth to power, explain to him why economists support free trade, and how, as much as Obama would like them to, his policies do not share a common intellectual heritage. Maybe in the end, Obama will still choose the Teamsters over the professors, but at very least he won’t be laboring under the delusion that his current actions serve both. In 2008, economists gave Obama the benefit of the doubt. If the next four years are anything like the first 100 days, Obama won’t be so lucky in 2012. (tech.mit.edu)


Does anyone here know how to play this game? … Whether one believes that the rebels are correct (about whether or not he is a socialist and whether or not Steele should call him as such) is irrelevant in so far that the controversy proves that Steele has a major problem. He has not been the leader I hoped he would be. When the race for RNC chair was on, I supported Steele because I thought he was a true leader. Thus far, he has disappointed me tremendously. In any case, I think that it is true that Obama has been influenced by collective ideologues but I would not call him a socialist. I think he is a social democrat. The two have some similarities, but also many differences. They are collectivist, however, and rooted in the belief that government can and should fix if not all, than at least most problems. Is it wise to call Obama a socialist? I think it is not. Not constantly, at least. Voters will get tired of the label if they hear it over and over again, especially if they believe it is used incorrectly. What is more, Obama is still quite popular. Calling him a socialist may actually help socialism become mainstream and accepted. “If that is hardcore socialism,” some will argue, “it is not that bad, is it?” No - if you are going to use ideological terms, just call Obama a ’social democrat.’ (poligazette.com)


Serious discussion avoided by Obamunists … What’s behind the modern “Tea Party” sentiment? I believe that it’s rooted in citizen anger and frustration that the federal government just spends and spends and spends, with no evident heed for tomorrow. The justification for heedless increases in government spending — even worse, increased spending with borrowed money — is along the lines of Pres. Franklin Roosevelt’s famous comment that “If we borrow funds, then we owe it to ourselves.” The modern justification, as a Federal Reserve official once explained to me, is that “As long as we can afford to pay the interest on the debt, it’ll be OK.” But the people are not blind, let alone stupid. It is clear that the federal debt just grows and grows. How much longer can this last? Today many informed citizens understand that the national debt is way too big. The rate of growth is out of control. We don’t “owe it to ourselves.” We owe it to the Chinese, the Japanese, the Middle Easterners. And we cannot afford to pay the interest anymore. Well, not if we want to be able to do anything else as a nation except work like tax-slaves to pay interest on past debt. By any technical measure, the federal government is insolvent — except for that quaint custom of inflating the currency with fiat dollars. So really, the nation is long overdue for a national discussion on the fundamental nature of its money. Hence the Tea Parties. (howestreet.com)


Underwriting union-backed, tax-funded fraud group with bank bailout cash … Top recipients of federal bailout money should get their own financial houses in order before they funnel any additional grants in the direction of self-described community activists such as the controversial group called ACORN. ACORN (the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) is one of the left-wing groups that have finagled millions in aid from some of the very banks now being bailed out with American taxpayer dollars. Bank of America, Citigroup, and JP Morgan are among the top recipients of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and they also happen to supply sizable grants to ACORN Housing Corporation, one of the group’s many affiliate organizations. These banks owe it to their customers, to say nothing of the larger American public, to re-evaluate their relationship with ACORN at a time when it is under investigation for vote fraud in at least 12 different states. It’s worth noting that two former board members have petitioned federal law enforcement officials to investigate embezzlement allegations that involve almost $1 million. Bank of America has contributed almost $3 million to ACORN Housing Corp. since 2005, according to the Capital Research Center (CRC), a conservative watchdog group. CRC has reported that the largest grant on record, in the amount of $740,000, went to ACORN’s Las Vegas office, which was raided by federal authorities last year because of suspected voter fraud. Edward Anguilla, a spokesman for Bank of America, told The Examiner that the grants funneled to ACORN Housing were part of a larger effort address the foreclosure crisis and were set up specifically for home retention and foreclosure mitigation work. (washingtonexaminer.com)


Communists make progress perfecting Democracy … There’s democracy in Cuba and it doesn’t divide the people, affirmed Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, during his appearance on the Special Round Table aired on Wednesday by Cuban radio and television. He indicated that is necessary to know Cuban democracy and compared it to that imposed on other peoples, which creates division and even wars; these are the Empire’s guidelines. However, the Caribbean archipelago has a model that doesn’t divide its citizens. (cubanews.ain.cu)