In short, ACORN or not, the 2010 census will be an organizing tool for the American Left.

Here is a partial list of other census partners, according to the Census website:

AARP

A. Phillip Randolph Institute

AFL-CIO

American Federation of Government Employees

AFSCME

American Federation of Teachers

Coalition of Labor Union Women

Coalition of Black Trade Unionists

Community Action Partnership

Families USA

International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Labor Council for the Latin American Advancement

League of Women Voters of the United States

National Black Justice Coalition

National Council of La Raza

National Education Association

Pride at Work

Rainbow Push Coalition

Service Employees International Union

Southern Coalition for Social Justice

United Workers

My problem all along is that overtly political organizations, say SEIU or ACORN, would be out collecting sensitive information on Americans.  What would stop them from zapping off one copy of personal information for themselves as they submit it to the Census Bureau?  The federal government We will essentially be paying organized labor and “social justice” organizations to recruit new members.

With such a tight grip on the Census by the Obama administration and its allies, one wonders what the end result will be and if it can be trusted.

Workforce Alliance

–

One of the classiest moments in the history of show biz starts at right around the three-minute mark.

Obviously, the comparison to Obama’s Nobel win is a little unfair. After all, Rhames actually accomplished a great performance. He wasn’t handed the award after a couple weeks of rehearsal.

–

One of the classiest moments in the history of show biz starts at right around the three-minute mark.

Obviously, the comparison to Obama’s Nobel win is a little unfair. After all, Rhames actually accomplished a great performance. He wasn’t handed the award after a couple weeks of rehearsal.

House committee earmarks $103 million of Defense funds to contractors who employ the congressmen’s former staffers-turned-lobbyists

National Science Foundation studies the bug splatter on the front bumper of a moving vehicle

National Historic Site in Maryland created by a congressional earmark costs $638,000 a year and has fewer visitors than some Alaskan parks that can’t even be reached by road

New USDA research agency already wants more money

Like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Administration might need a federal bailout

Most Interior Department law enforcement programs can not accurately account for the firearms under their control and some of their guns are vulnerable to theft

Bureau of Land Management employees too cozy with special interest groups and lobbyists, according to the Inspector General

A new computer system key to the nation’s air traffic control system has already run into problems, raising doubts about whether it can be operational when the current computers must be replaced

California has paid more than $8 million in late-payment penalties over the last two years because Sacramento did not pay the bills when they were owed

The Thesis: The Nobel Peace Prize means nothing. It is now just another paragon of political correctness manifested on the world stage. It’s the international equivalent to “Student of the Week” or any other unearned, self-esteem-based prize.

“I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.” – David Mamet

As I discussed in my very first post here at Big Hollywood, many in the theatre world were surprised to read David Mamet’s amazing article, “Why I am No Longer A Brain-Dead Liberal” in the Village Voice.  In my post, I used the play “Oleanna” as an example of a conservative lean that I recognized in Mamet’s work when it premiered off-Broadway in 1992.  I concluded with a couple of questions:

The real test will be when Mamet offers a new work for public consumption.  Will it be viewed through a new spectrum?  Will critics recognize Mamet’s un-deniable brilliance?  Or, will a hidden meaning be searched for in every scene and in every rapid-fire dialogue sequence?

It turns out we won’t have to wait long for an answer.  Our current Broadway season will feature two major productions from Mr. Mamet, and both deal with the most controversial political issues of our time:  Race and Gender.

This week, the Mark Taper Forum’s revival of the aforementioned “Oleanna” will open on Broadway.  ”Oleanna” was universally hailed when presented in the wake of the Clarence Thomas hearings.  Many of the critics praised Mamet for being so even-handed in its presentation that it was hard for people to really know if the accused man was truly guilty of sexual harassment.  Now that Mamet has “outed” himself, will they still see “Oleanna” and Mamet as “even-handed?”

Later this winter will see the opening of the brilliantly and economically titled:  ”Race” directed by Mamet, himself.  Precious few details have been leaked about the plot other than a quick description in Mr. Mamet’s recent, must-read NY Times op-ed:

In my play a firm made up of three lawyers, two black and one white, is offered the chance to defend a white man charged with a crime against a black young woman. It is a play about lies.

How will “Race” be received in the Era of Obama with the knowledge that Mamet is no longer a “brain-dead liberal”?

I plan to use my space here at Big Hollywood to let you know.  I will be providing a run-down of the critics’ reactions to these plays and any direct, personal attacks on Mr. Mamet and/or his politics.

In the true tradition of Broadway, I can provide you a “preview.” The Atlantic Theatre Company just opened two Mamet one-acts under the single title:  “Two Unrelated Plays” by David Mamet.   There is a very useful website called “Critic-O-Meter” which compiles all of the reviews for plays that open in New York.  I use the site often as a resource.  The proprietors of the site provide a quick synopsis of the reviews before linking to each, individual one.  In its synopsis of the Mamet one-acts, the site provided this helpful information:

Despite writing some bona-fide classics, David Mamet hasn’t written a good play since The Cryptogram, devoting most of his time to creating a third-rate 24, excoriating Jews who aren’t into ethnic cleansing as self-hating and– in his essays in the Times and the Voice– doing his borscht-belt imitation of Ann Coulter’s schtick. Ah well, he has a banner season ahead of him anyway, including a revival of Oleanna (the first step in his artistic downfall) and a new play called Race, both of which open on Broadway this season.

Mr. Mamet:  Welcome to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

But, she has also picked up the support of the DailyKos, not a traditionally deep well of support for Republicans. Oh, and ACORN’s Working Families Party. Below is a memo Big Government obtained circulating among leaders of the conservative movement. It is from New York State Conservative Party Chair, Mike Long:

Donors to the Republican National Congressional Committee have a right to expect their support will help candidates who are broadly in accord with the Republican Party’s fundamental principles. 

There is little doubt, in these lean times, Americans who make contributions to the NRCC would be shocked to learn their dollars are actually supporting the campaign of an unrepentant liberal who opposes the central achievements of today’s Republican Congressional delegation.

Yet that is exactly to sad a state of affairs we now confront.  The NRCC is using the contributions of loyal Republicans across the country to fund the Congressional bid of Liberal New York State Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava. 

Assemblywoman Scozzafava supports the Obama tax-and-spend Stimulus Package – - the same package the Republicans now in Congress unanimously rejected.  She defends the kind of earmarked pork-barrel spending that cost Republicans so much credibility in the last election.  She supports Big Labor’s card check attack on the secret ballot.  And she twice voted to legalize gay marriage.

Assemblywoman Scozzafava wasn’t picked by the voters.  Party bosses selected her, reportedly with the guidance and direction of the NRCC. 

So, what is at stake here is more than the risk of electing yet another Arlen Specter-style liberal Republican.  This is a battle about the soul and future of the Republican Party.

Some think the way to win elections is to mimic the Democrats, to offer the voters “liberal-lite” in hopes of finding accommodation with the Democrats and success at the polls.

The NRCC’s support for liberal Assemblywoman Scozzafava is a disturbing indication that the NRCC is test marketing a campaign message blurring the differences between the parties instead of principled opposition to the liberal Democrats’ agenda.  

The “me-to” approach is both sure to fail politically and deeply dishonest to the NRCC’s core financial supporters.  The donors who sacrifice to write checks to the NRCC don’t expect their efforts to be diverted to liberals like Assemblywoman Scozzafava.

Accordingly, while we are all friends of the NRCC, we reluctantly call for a moratorium on any financial contributions to the NRCC until that organization ceases support for Assemblywoman Scozzafava and clarifies its plans for candidate recruitment and support going forward.

There are great opportunities ahead for the Republicans in Congress.  Those opportunities cannot be squandered by political miscalculations and a lack of faith in the central values of the Republican Party.

Sincerely,

Mike Long

Chairman, New York State Conservative Party

It isn’t mentioned in the memo, but Scozzafava has run for the state Assembly repeatedly with the endorsement of ACORN’s Working Families Party. The WFP was formed for the express purpose of pushing the Democratic party to the left. The principle-bending gymnastics involved for a Republican to seek out their endorsement are positively mind-boggling.

Count us as big believers in the “big tent’ theory of political parties. No matter how large you want to build your tent, though, it still has to be built on a solid foundation. You’d think Republicans could agree that ACORN’s Working Families party–based on what we know right now–wouldn’t have a place there.

Those of you who think a GOP return to the majority in 2010 will right what ails us should keep this in mind.

I’d like to say that I’m really happy for him…. but isn’t that what this is all about? Being happy for “him?”

Wasn’t that what the Olympics were about? Rooting for “him?”

Wasn’t that what the last presidential election was about? Electing “him?”

It’s never about us. Or the U.S.

Because if it was, no Nobel committee would have ever given him that prize. The fact is, you only win that prize if a particular transaction is made -that is, a weakening of America in exchange for worldly acceptance by madmen, maniacs and mass murderers.

But that’s not all.

The prize is not meant to award achievement, but to insult folks the committee finds distasteful – meaning those who refuse to share their assumptions about a deeply flawed – oh let’s face it, evil – America.

Meaning, you and me. And like I always say, when it happens three times, it’s officially a trend. The 2002 prize to Jimmy Carter was meant to humiliate President Bush for the Iraq War build-up. They even admitted that. Then in 2007, they handed the political prop to Al Gore – a message meant to slap Bush for winning the 2000 election, and also America for not embracing global warming ideology.

And that’s what this prize is all about now. It’s not just another slap at Bush (well, it is), but a prop to help beat back the simmering dissent Obama’s progressive agenda has caused, here.

The Nobel committee wants him to succeed, for they’re smitten with this “citizen of the world,” a man who puts the globe before his country.

Forget human rights activism: this is how you win an award, people.

It won’t help us, but It’ll look great on his mantle. Next to the Grammy.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, Doug Giles, Sandra Smith, Mary Katherine Hamm, and Dick Valentine from the Electric Six! ]]> http://www.newmediablog.com/2009/10/daily-gut-it%e2%80%99s-all-about-him-not-us/feed/ 0 http://www.newmediablog.com/2009/10/obama-and-the-nobel-right-man-wrong-prize/ http://www.newmediablog.com/2009/10/obama-and-the-nobel-right-man-wrong-prize/#comments Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:21:56 +0000 Doug O'Brien http://biggovernment.com/?p=14930 The Norwegian Nobel Committee wanted to let everyone know that they really like Barack Obama. They approve of his political views and they want him to remake the world according to his vision.  Okay, we get it.  The Norwegians, one of the most homogeneous societies in the world, whose sole significant imprint on the world stage is the annual awarding of this increasingly worthless prize, arrogantly assume the role of moral arbiters of United States politics.  Thanks.  Appreciate it. 

It is blatantly absurd to award the Nobel Peace Prize to a nine-month president with absolutely no foreign policy achievement of note.  Especially when there are so many other fields where the Academy could justify lavishing glory, (and money–one wonders what POTUS will do with the cash?) on their secular savior. 

 President Obama has written two highly acclaimed (by the left) books.  Dreams from My Father is his accounting of his unique life story and his journey to understand his roots and his father’s abandonment of him and his mother.  It was called, “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician,” by fawning sychophant Joe Klein.

 His second book, The Audacity of Hope (the first campaign flier published by Crown) was his soaring vision of a nation and world guided by the kind of social justice that only a community organizer can envision.  No less a literary critic than Gary Hart called Obama a, “figure who possesses perseverance and writing skills that have flashes of grandeur.”  The book occupied the New York Times Bestseller List for thirty weeks and won a Grammy to boot.

Almost any writer would kill to have sold as many volumes and have his or her books become so influential.  Surely the Nobel Prize for literature would have been much more justifiable.

Come to think of it, one could justify almost any other Nobel Prize for Obama other than the Peace Prize.  As has been exhaustively noted by questioners around the globe, the prizes are awareded for acheivement, not for good intentions, not for speeches or sound bites or just not being the guy you replaced.  It could be rationalized if Obama had spent decades striving for peace and had kept coming up short, to give him the prize for persistency.  Kind of like the Irving Thalberg Award for sticking around long enough.  In other words, Jimmy Carter’s Nobel Prize.

How about the prize for medicine?  Come up with some new discovery of how this gene or this virus works and help some people live a better life?  Pfooey!  Completely restructure the way 300 million people get treatment, invade people’s lives to an unprecedented level, decide what care is government-sanctioned and what isn’t, and in the process undermine the best care in the world, and you can really lay claim to having an impact on medicine.  Even without a bill passed yet, there is something there to hang your hat on.

But without a doubt, the prize to which Obama can most reasonably lay claim is that for economics, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.  His nearly one-trillion dollar stimulus package has been a major achievement in the field.  It has been the most high-profile repudiation of Keynesian theory ever launched.  Of course, that wasn’t Obama’s intent, but so many scientific breakthroughs have come about while academics were trying to determine something else entirely.   The president conducted one of the highest-cost economics experiments in history, (with taxpayer money) to see if J. M. Keynes theory that massive government spending could essentially end economic recessions. 

The answer is, of course, no.  In an era where economic cycles, like all others are compressed, the consensus is that the stimulus has fallen far short of its desired impact.  Even if we grant that Congressional Democrats hijacked the initiative to pay off organized labor, environmentalists, and special-interest advocates of pet social projects, the package has not delivered.  Unemployment continues to creep upward, no matter how much dissembling the administration undertakes about “jobs saved,” and how many more would be out of work without the stimulus.

In a few short months, Professor Obama has achieved what many economists spend a life time trying.  He has provided concrete evidence to support an economic theory.  Fortunately for the future of the republic and the solvency of generations to come, the theory he has helped prove is that Keynes’ theory is garbage.  Government cannot borrow and spend its way to prosperity.   Obama’s experiment shows that government is an inefficient agent for redistribution of resources.  Its efforts are subject to political whims, its actions are slow and entail unforeseen costs and consequences that diminish, rather than increase positive economic activity. 

Now that is an achievement worthy of a Nobel Prize.  Come to think of it, a few more years of this and Obama will be a lock for the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty.

It is blatantly absurd to award the Nobel Peace Prize to a nine-month president with absolutely no foreign policy achievement of note.  Especially when there are so many other fields where the Academy could justify lavishing glory, (and money–one wonders what POTUS will do with the cash?) on their secular savior. 

 President Obama has written two highly acclaimed (by the left) books.  Dreams from My Father is his accounting of his unique life story and his journey to understand his roots and his father’s abandonment of him and his mother.  It was called, “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician,” by fawning sychophant Joe Klein.

 His second book, The Audacity of Hope (the first campaign flier published by Crown) was his soaring vision of a nation and world guided by the kind of social justice that only a community organizer can envision.  No less a literary critic than Gary Hart called Obama a, “figure who possesses perseverance and writing skills that have flashes of grandeur.”  The book occupied the New York Times Bestseller List for thirty weeks and won a Grammy to boot.

Almost any writer would kill to have sold as many volumes and have his or her books become so influential.  Surely the Nobel Prize for literature would have been much more justifiable.

Come to think of it, one could justify almost any other Nobel Prize for Obama other than the Peace Prize.  As has been exhaustively noted by questioners around the globe, the prizes are awareded for acheivement, not for good intentions, not for speeches or sound bites or just not being the guy you replaced.  It could be rationalized if Obama had spent decades striving for peace and had kept coming up short, to give him the prize for persistency.  Kind of like the Irving Thalberg Award for sticking around long enough.  In other words, Jimmy Carter’s Nobel Prize.

How about the prize for medicine?  Come up with some new discovery of how this gene or this virus works and help some people live a better life?  Pfooey!  Completely restructure the way 300 million people get treatment, invade people’s lives to an unprecedented level, decide what care is government-sanctioned and what isn’t, and in the process undermine the best care in the world, and you can really lay claim to having an impact on medicine.  Even without a bill passed yet, there is something there to hang your hat on.

But without a doubt, the prize to which Obama can most reasonably lay claim is that for economics, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.  His nearly one-trillion dollar stimulus package has been a major achievement in the field.  It has been the most high-profile repudiation of Keynesian theory ever launched.  Of course, that wasn’t Obama’s intent, but so many scientific breakthroughs have come about while academics were trying to determine something else entirely.   The president conducted one of the highest-cost economics experiments in history, (with taxpayer money) to see if J. M. Keynes theory that massive government spending could essentially end economic recessions. 

The answer is, of course, no.  In an era where economic cycles, like all others are compressed, the consensus is that the stimulus has fallen far short of its desired impact.  Even if we grant that Congressional Democrats hijacked the initiative to pay off organized labor, environmentalists, and special-interest advocates of pet social projects, the package has not delivered.  Unemployment continues to creep upward, no matter how much dissembling the administration undertakes about “jobs saved,” and how many more would be out of work without the stimulus.

In a few short months, Professor Obama has achieved what many economists spend a life time trying.  He has provided concrete evidence to support an economic theory.  Fortunately for the future of the republic and the solvency of generations to come, the theory he has helped prove is that Keynes’ theory is garbage.  Government cannot borrow and spend its way to prosperity.   Obama’s experiment shows that government is an inefficient agent for redistribution of resources.  Its efforts are subject to political whims, its actions are slow and entail unforeseen costs and consequences that diminish, rather than increase positive economic activity. 

Now that is an achievement worthy of a Nobel Prize.  Come to think of it, a few more years of this and Obama will be a lock for the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty.