The Little Red Hen

– by Doug Smith –

attributed: Summit Sun 8 July 1971

Once upon a time, there was a little red hen who scratched about and uncovered some grains of wheat.  She called her barnyard neighbors and said, “If we work together and plant this wheat, we will have some fine bread to eat.  Who will help me plant the wheat?”  “Not I,” said the cow.  “Not I,” said the duck.  “Not I,” said the goose.  “Then I will,” said the little red hen, and she did.

 

The wheat grew tall and ripened into golden grain.  “Who will help me reap my wheat?” asked the little red hen.  “Not I,” said the duck.  “Out of my classification,” said the pig.  “I’d lose my seniority” said the cow.  “I’d lose my unemployment insurance,” said the goose.

Then it came time to bake the bread.  “That’s overtime for me,” said the cow.  I’m a dropout and never learned how,” said the duck.  “I’d lose my welfare benefits,” said the pig.  “If I’m the only one helping, that’s discrimination,” said the goose.

“Then I will,” said the little red hen.  And she did.

She baked five loaves of fine bread and held them all up for the neighbors to see.  They all wanted some, demanded a share.  But the red hen said, “No, I can rest for a while and eat the five loaves myself.”

“Excess profits,” cried the cow.  “Capitalistic leech,” screamed the duck.  “Company fink,” grunted the pig.  “Equal rights,” yelled the goose.  And they hurriedly painted picket signs and marched around the little red hen singing, “We shall overcome,” and they did.

For when the farmer came, he said, “You must not be greedy, little red hen.  Look at the oppressed cow.  Look at the disadvantaged duck.  Look at the under-privileged pig.  Look at the less fortunate goose.  You are guilty of making second-class citizens of them.”

“But….but,” said the little red hen.  “I earned the bread.”

“Exactly,” said the wise farmer.  “That is the wonderful free enterprise system; anybody in the barnyard can earn as much as he wants.  You should be happy to have this freedom.  In other barnyards, you’d have to give all five loaves to the farmer.  Here you give four loaves to your suffering neighbors.” And they lived happily ever after, including the little red hen, who smiled and clucked: “I am grateful.  I am grateful.”

But her neighbors wondered why she never baked any more bread.

Phyllis Schlafly: Gov’t Organizing Radicals In Our Schools

Gov’t Organizing Radicals In Our Schools

By PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY
IBD: 1 March 2010

President Obama’s budget has added more than $100 billion in federal taxpayers’ money to what is called “education,” so that means it will be spent by alumni of the Saul Alinsky school of radical community organizing and/or the Chicago Democratic machine. We’re indebted to Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com for exposing the shocking use of some of these funds.

Obama is using the public schools to recruit a private army of high-schoolers to “build on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda.” We now know Obama’s “agenda” is to move the U.S. into European-style socialism.

Obama’s Internet outreach during his campaign, Obama for America, has been renamed Organizing for America (OFA) in order to recruit students to join a cult of Obama and become activists for his goals.

Stirring It Up

Geller discovered that the teacher of an 11th-grade government class in Massillon, Ohio, passed out the sign-up sheet, headed with Obama’s “O” logo, asking students to become interns for Organizing for America.

These interns will get an intensive nine-week training course using comprehensive lesson plans. Assigned readings include Saul Alinsky’s notorious “Rules for Radicals,” “Stir It Up: Lessons From Community Organizing and Advocacy” by left-wing activist Rinku Sen, and parts of “Dreams From My Father” dealing with Obama’s days as a Chicago community organizer.

Republican students will be filtered out of the intern program by requiring applicants to answer questions that reveal their politics. One example: “What one issue facing our country is important to you and why?”

Geller said the purpose of this training to become Alinsky-style community organizers is, “of course, to elect more Democrats.” The program is specifically geared to get the kids working in the 2010 elections.

Change Agenda

The sign-up sheet for Organizing for America starts with this instruction: “Organizing for America, the successor organization to Obama for America, is building on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda of change.”

The application explains that this national internship program is “working to make the change we fought so hard for in 2008 a reality in 2010 and beyond.”

This is not the first time Obama has tried to enlist schoolchildren into an Obama cult.

Last fall, the instructions mailed to every school by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan added a very political dimension to Obama’s speech that was broadcast to public school children on Sept. 8.

Geller explained the extensive political dimension of the intern program. The OFA student interns will be trained in the goals and language of the left: “anti-war agitation, anti-capitalism, Marx, Lenin, (Bill) Ayers, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) agenda promotion, global warming, soft-on-jihad and illegal immigration.”

Also on OFA’s reading list is “The New Organizers” by Zack Exley. It brags about “an insurgent generation of organizers” inside the Obama campaign that has “almost without anyone noticing … built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people’s organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level.”

The 10-page “National Intern Organizer Curriculum” is very specific in describing the tactics that interns will be taught. It includes these components: “Using Story as an Organizing Tool, Building Relationships and Building Teams, Mobilizing to Win on the Issues (issue advocacy), Health Care Service Project.”

Passage of ObamaCare is one of this intern project’s major goals. The curriculum promises to provide “insight on the strategy and plan behind the health care campaign” and “further motivate them to work on the issue.”

The sign-up sheet states that the “purpose” of training these students is “to build community” among the interns and teach them “to be leaders in OFA’s organizing work.” After all, Barack Obama knows a great deal about being a community organizer — that was his only real job before he got into politics.

Acorn Support

Job prospects may be bleak for many Americans, but they will be rosy for alumni of Obama’s intern program.

After the students have been fully trained as Alinsky-style community organizers, they will be eligible for jobs in Senior Corps, AmeriCorps or Learn and Serve America.

Those three so-called “service” organizations, which annually dole out millions of dollars to left-wing groups, are overseen by the Corporation for National and Community Service.

The U.S. Senate just confirmed this corporation’s new chief executive, Patrick Corvington, who was a senior official of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which has given over a million and a half dollars to the Acorn network of organizations.

Cartoon: Obama’s Spending Plan

http://www.investors.com/image/ramirez021810_FULL.jpg.cms

Cartoon: Mt. Spendmore….(Obama)

Cartoon: ‘Bama’s Response to Iran Threat

Cartoon: Obama’s Spending Freeze

Cartoon: You’re Gonna Have to Trust Us

Cartoon: Obama “Pants on the Ground”

source: wnd.com

Cartoon: Obama’s Job Creation

Cartoon: Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize

Cartoon: Obama’s 30,000 Troop Surge

Cartoon: Obama’s Party Crashers

Tom Sowell: Deepest Bow Is Reserved For World Opinion

Deepest Bow Is Reserved For World Opinion

By THOMAS SOWELL IBD: 17 Nov. 2009

In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.

Terrorists are not even entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions, much less the Constitution of the United States. Terrorists have never observed, nor even claimed to have observed, the Geneva Conventions, nor are they among those covered by it.

But over and above the utter inconsistency of what is being done is the utter recklessness it represents.

The last time an attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a matter of domestic criminal justice was after a bomb was exploded there in 1993. Under the rules of American criminal law, the prosecution had to turn over all sorts of information to the defense — information that told the al-Qaida international terrorist network what we knew about them and how we knew it.

This was nothing more and nothing less than giving away military secrets to an enemy in wartime — something for which people have been executed, as they should have been.

Secrecy in warfare is a matter of life and death. Lives were risked and lost during World War II to prevent Nazi Germany from discovering that Britain had broken its supposedly unbreakable Enigma code and could read their military plans that were being radioed in that code.

“Loose lips sink ships” was the World War II motto in the United States. But loose lips are mandated under the rules of criminal prosecutions.

Cartoon: Obama’s Job Creation

Oba Mao

Articles Featuring the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong and President Obama dressed in Communist Cultural Revolution-era military uniform are sold in Beijing.  The Chinese have learned English from Obama’s speeches and celebrate the “fearless” way he rolls up his sleeves.  Now that he’s coming, he’s also being greeted by items ranging from “Oba Mao” T-Shirts to a statue of him that bursts into flames.

 

 

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Justice Denied

Justice Denied

IBD: 16 Nov. 2009

In this March 1, 2003 file picture, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is seen shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan. Attorney General Eric Holder.

War On Terror: Eric Holder’s move to try the 9/11 masterminds in Manhattan makes it official: This administration has reverted to pre-9/11 “crime” fighting.

Amid all the talk during the attorney general’s surreal press conference of the “crime” committed eight years ago, the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon wasn’t even mentioned.

Lest anyone forget, the military headquarters of the United States was attacked that day along with the Twin Towers.

An entire wedge of the Ring was gutted when the Saudi hijackers slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into it. Nearly 200 military personnel were killed, along with the passengers and crew of the hijacked jet.

The jet was a weapon used to attack the very center of our military. That was not a “crime,” as some say. It was an act of war.

And 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, along with the four other al-Qaida terrorist co-conspirators Holder wants to try, are no mere criminals. They are enemy combatants — and should be treated as such.

Yet this administration has adopted the same crime-centered mentality as the last Democratic administration. The one that treated al-Qaida’s first World Trade Center bombing as a “crime.” And al-Qaida’s attack on the U.S. embassies in Africa as a “crime.” And even al-Qaida’s attack on the USS Cole as a “crime.”

All were prosecuted in U.S. courts. A lot of good that did.

While President Bill Clinton was busy preparing indictments against the terrorists, al-Qaida was already plotting its next move. It hit the Pentagon just nine months after Clinton and his crime-fighters left office.

Maddeningly, this administration is repeating the Clinton administration’s mistake.

KSM and the other terrorists, er, “defendants” aren’t even U.S. citizens. They don’t deserve all the rights afforded citizens in our civilian court system. They shouldn’t be allowed to use our courts as a platform to promulgate their ideology of hate. Which they will, sure as Osama bin Laden is smiling right now.

This will only serve to inspire more homegrown terrorists — and stab at the hearts of the relatives of 9/11 victims.

Holder clucked that the “trials will be open to the public and the world.” And they will turn into circuses, playing right into the hands of the enemy.

These trials will drag on for years, perhaps even decades, as defense lawyers file endless motions and appeals. Meanwhile, valuable intelligence about interrogation techniques and other methods we’ve used against al-Qaida will be revealed to the enemy during trial discovery.

This move to a civilian court makes no sense at all, except viewed through a political prism. Maybe the White House wants to make its Jan. 22 deadline to close Gitmo. Or maybe it’s keen to publicly differentiate itself from the previous administration, which was considerably tougher on terrorists.

Either way, it’s an unwise move. It will only remind people how much America has shrunk in the last nine months.

Israel and Obama: Deaf Ears, Dumb Voters

This article makes you question the supposition that all Jews are smart.

You might want to pass this on to your Jewish friends who voted for Obama, and who probably think that he is still a great President.

November 13, 2009

Deaf Ears, Dumb Voters

By Suzanne Fields

If a photograph is worth a thousand words, a sharp newspaper cartoon is often worth the book. One Israeli cartoonist depicts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the missus arriving at the White House to meet with Barack Obama. Mrs. Netanyahu knocks at the front door with the explanation, “We just happened to be in the neighborhood.” Another cartoon depicts the prime minister pulling up at the White House, and telling the driver to wait: “I’m not sure they’re at home.”

With a few strokes of pen and brush, the cartoonists capture the prevailing Israeli dismay, frustration and controlled fury at President Obama’s reluctance to meet the prime minister, who was in Washington this week. The administration wanted to punish Israel by setting “pre-conditions” for talks and for not having a more “conciliatory” attitude toward those who vow to “wipe the Jewish nation off the map.”

On the street and at higher levels, Israelis look back in anger, observing that the president set no “pre-conditions” before meeting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, who is on the way to building a nuclear weapon to put Israel in mortal danger. The Israelis say Obama wants to extract an opening promise to freeze settlements on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, something that’s never been a pre-condition for starting talks.

The prime minister was eventually invited into the Oval Office for a brief “low-key” exchange, but without the customary photo op afterward. This president does not offer the strong handshake of friendship that Bill Clinton and George W. extended to previous Israeli prime ministers. President Obama says “America’s bond with our Israeli allies is unbreakable,” but it sounds more like the lip service paid by Jimmy Carter.

President Obama shows none of the instinctive affection for Israel or understanding of the history of the Jewish state. This is not lost on the Israelis, who have to cultivate long memories as a survival strategy. They’re not as sanguine as American Jews who voted in enormous numbers for Obama despite his long associations with those who wish Israel only ill.

They remember how Obama apparently slept through two decades of Sunday morning rants by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, citing chapter and verse of his accusations that Israel committed “genocide” against the Palestinians. They remember that the president once cited as his “mentor” Rashid Khalidi, the professor at Columbia University who frequently denounces Israel as “a racist state” and defends Palestinian suicide bombers.

Many Israelis are puzzled by how American Jews give the president a passing grade on the kishke test, using the Yiddish word for “gut.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, who worked as a senior campaign adviser to Obama, even urged the president to shoot down Israeli planes if they fly over Iraq on their way to bomb the Iranian nuclear sites. John McCain, on the other hand, said “the only thing worse than bombing Iran is letting Iran get the bomb.” Obama defeated McCain by 57 points among Jewish voters.

A growing number of Jewish voices are asking how, if Jews are so smart, can this be? Norman Podhoretz, one of the most prominent Jewish voices in America, talked about his new book, “Why Are Jews Liberal?” the other day at the Hudson Institute in Washington. The question is especially timely against the backdrop of the ’08 campaign, given that Obama captured 78 percent of the Jewish vote, and continues to espouse positions, sometimes subtly and sometimes not so subtly, which conflict sharply with what most American Jews say they want for Israel.

I asked Podhoretz what the Israeli prime minister might say to the president about the unchecked threat by Iran. “The Jewish people have existed for 3,500 years, a long rich history, and only yesterday overcame a very serious, determined threat to end its existence,” he replied, as if channeling Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to Barack Obama. “Now we have another very serious threat to annihilate (the Jews) by a country that is rapidly acquiring the means to make good on that threat. I, as prime minister of Israel, have accepted the intolerably heavy burden of deciding whether I will preside over the end of the Jewish people, the end of this 3,500 year history, and I will take admittedly dangerous and risky steps in order to prevent this. I ask you not to try to prevent me from making this effort if I have to make it, which I fear I might.”

Does he think such words, if spoken by the prime minister to the president, would be persuasive? No, he said. Not really. Such words would fall on “deaf ears.” And he still wouldn’t get his Oval Office photo-op, either.

 

Confessions of an ObamaCare Backer

A liberal explains the political calculus.

The typical argument for ObamaCare is that it will offer better medical care for everyone and cost less to do it, but occasionally a supporter lets the mask slip and reveals the real political motivation. So let’s give credit to John Cassidy, part of the left-wing stable at the New Yorker, who wrote last week on its Web site that “it’s important to be clear about what the reform amounts to.”

Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. “The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment,” he writes. “Let’s not pretend that it isn’t a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won’t. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind.”

Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of “making the United States a more equitable country” and furthering the Democrats’ “political calculus.” In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.

This explains why Nancy Pelosi is willing to risk the seats of so many Blue Dog Democrats by forcing such an unpopular bill through Congress on a narrow, partisan vote: You have to break a few eggs to make a permanent welfare state. As Mr. Cassidy concludes, “Putting on my amateur historian’s cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted.”

No wonder many Americans are upset. They know they are being lied to about ObamaCare, and they know they are going to be stuck with the bill.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A24 – 10 Nov. 2009

CRITICAL: Suicide By PC

Suicide By PC

IBD: 10 Nov 2009

For Gen. Casey, loss of diversity would be an “even greater tragedy.” AP (????????)

 

War On Terror: The No. 1 lesson of the Fort Hood massacre is that political correctness kills. But instead of learning this lesson, the Pentagon is repeating the mistake, putting more soldiers at risk.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey warns that making the connection between Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s terrorist act and his Islamic faith could “cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers.”

Yet ignoring that connection, despite one red flag after another, is what allowed Hasan allegedly to carry out his own violent backlash against non-Muslim soldiers.

Just a few months ago, Hasan was promoted to major. He passed a security clearance despite evidence he openly engaged in anti-American rants, and even discussed cutting the throats of infidels during a PowerPoint presentation. Now there are reports that U.S. intelligence intercepted contacts between Hasan and al-Qaida.

But shhh! This isn’t about Islam. Close your eyes. Look the other way. Do not make the connection.

“It would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here,” Casey said on Sunday’s morning shows. Really? Tell that to the victims of the Muslim terrorist who shouted “Allahu Akbar!” before pumping fellow soldiers full of bullets at close range. Tell it to their grieving families.

Diversity is a good thing only if Muslims embrace the military’s mission. Of course many do, but a growing number object to fighting Muslims abroad. By our count, at least a dozen Muslims in uniform have been charged or convicted of terror or spying since 9/11, including Hasan. That’s a sectarian pattern, not a random act by a lone gunman, as the media have portrayed it.

The prize for digging up the most imaginative excuse for Hasan’s actions goes to ABC News. The network speculated he may have suffered from “second-hand trauma” — “like second-hand smoke” — from counseling soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder.

You see, Hasan had never actually been deployed, never seen combat, as first assumed. So the initial spin that he suffered PTSD no longer worked. Unless he suffered combat stress by proxy. So now it’s “second-hand trauma.” Anything but jihad.

But let’s be fair. At least ABC reported that Hasan was Muslim. Over at Fox News, host Shephard Smith refused to even mention Hasan’s name. And he’s still waiting on a motive. “As journalists,” the anchor said Monday, “we can’t report what the motive was, because at this point, we don’t know what his motive was.”

Seems Fox has caught the PC virus.

Meanwhile, our commander in chief refuses to call the attack terrorism. And he seemed to take news of the military massacre glibly. Briefed on the shooting before an appearance at a Democrat event, he walked up to the podium grinning. Then, in a bizarre non-sequitur, he gave a “shout out” to a Democrat supporter, infuriating soldiers across the country, and rightfully so.

Surely the Homeland Security secretary would tell it like it is. No such luck. Janet Napolitano issued a warning to Americans from the UAE against any anti-Muslim backlash. She said she’d work with Muslim groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, to deflect any bigotry. To hear her, Islam was the real victim of the Islam-inspired terrorism.

Democrats aren’t the only ones in denial. “It’s certainly not about his religion,” intoned GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Passing out Qurans the morning of the shooting. Nope, no religion here! Proselytizing fellow soldiers to Islam. Not religion.

Close your eyes. Look the other way.

This PC insanity is literally killing us now. We are committing politically correct suicide. If the military is now too PC to protect its own troops from Islamic fanatics on its own soil, how can we be sure it can protect the rest of us?

Cartoon: Obama Tears Down Wall St.

Cartoon: Obama – A Year Later

Cartoon: 68,000 Reasons Obama Should Listen to His Generals

Cartoon: Miracle Healthcare Reform

IBD: Michael Ramirez | 3 Nov. 2009

Cartoon: Al Gore vs. Obama

Cartoon: Obama Golfing