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Barack Obama, Leftist?
Captain's Quarters ^ | Feb. 17, 2008 | Ed Morrissey

Posted on 02/17/2008 7:16:28 AM PST by jdm

Two foreign newspapers introduce the notion of Barack Obama as a Leftist. The Times of London reports that Republicans intend on painting him as such in the general election, based on his voting record in the Senate and in the Illinios state legislature. La Jornada of Mexico celebrates Obama as potentially the first Leftist President in American history, and a harbinger of what awaits the hemisphere (via Memeorandum and TMV):

LEADING Republicans believe they can trounce Barack Obama in the presidential election by tarring him as a shady Chicago socialist. They are increasingly confident that his campaign could collapse by the time their attack machine has finished with him. ...

“It will be easy to portray him as even harder-left than Hillary,” said Norquist. “Hillary could lose the election, but Obama could collapse. People already know Hillary and she is not popular, but the disadvantage for Obama is that Republicans can teach people who don’t know him who he is.”

Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House and Republican guru, recently described Obama as the “most leftwing candidate to run since George McGovern” – a reference to the anti-Vietnam-war Democrat who lost 49 states out of 50 to Richard Nixon in the 1972 election. Norquist believes Obama’s questionable Chicago connections will stir things further.

Luis Linares Zapata agrees, but he's a lot happier about it. In La Jornada, he writes that Obama has initiated the "most attractive electoral phenomenon in the recent history of the US":

Obama aims at modifying deeply the ways, habits and privileges of the politicians in Washington, and to destroy the knots that block or detrimentally affect the public programs. His priorities are socially oriented, including everyone and not leaving out, as is happening now, a great proportion of Americans from important benefits. But, above all, he has succeeded in imbuing people with the feeling that a profound change is unavoidable for the future of the country. He wants to transform not only politics, to make it a decent and responsible activity, but to change society itself to make it fairer, less excluding, and more unified.

The possibility that a colored man [perhaps a poor translation of "man of color"] will become the Democratic candidate, against all initial predictions, is growing as his movement gains impetus. Last Tuesday’s primaries show unequivocally his robustness. Despair is creeping into the opposing field. Everything signals an unsteady Hilary who has lost her way and even her composure to the point of changing her strategist. The coming Super Tuesday 2 will be the definitive confrontation, when states with numerous delegates participate. If Barack wins thereafter the presidency of the United States, he will be the first leftist politician in that country and another signal of the present and future times in this continent.

The foreign press certainly recognizes Obama as a Leftist. It's not outrageous that the Republicans see him the same way. Mexico's pundits have seen their share of Leftists promising Utopia, and Linares Zapata recognizes the strain of politics north of the border as well.

Take a look at Barack Obama's economic plan, for instance. It provides some specifics for Obama's stratospheric rhetoric, but really just gives us a series of proposals to further entrench the federal government as the nanny of the American family. For instance, Obama proposes to create a government-run savings program that provides matching funds on savings. In other words, Obama wants to collect tax money to redistribute it to savers, in a plan that works much the same as employer 401k plans. Why should the government pay people to save their money, especially outside the 401ks that work better and have much higher caps?

Do you like the IRS? Want to trust them to do your tax returns? Rather than simplify taxes, Obama instead wants to have the IRS prepare your returns for you and send them out for your signature. Since the IRS gets all of your income information already, he wants the IRS to calculate how much you owe, without apparently considering that most Americans itemize for deductions. It doesn't cut down on preparation time in any case, but merely transfers the cost to the federal government-- as well as more power to the IRS.

Let's also consider the workplace pension plan Obama will create. It will create a system of accounts that can follow a worker who moves from employer to employer, and will also provide for pensions when working for small and midsize companies that do not offer one. We already have this system; it's called Social Security, and it's slowly going broke. When George Bush tried to bolster it with private accounts -- integrated into SS, not a new parallel system as Obama proposes -- Democrats screamed bloody murder.

And what happens when the federal government sets up a competing pension system for American workers? Do you think that employers will continue to offer pensions, or do you suppose they'll shrug that off and let the government take up the slack instead? We will have created another massive new entitlement system, when we can't afford the ones we have now.

Under Barack Obama's vision for America, the federal government will run vast parts of the economy. Would that make him the first Leftist President? Only if he gets to the White House ahead of Hillary Clinton.


TOPICS: Editorial; Government; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: barackhusseinobama; leftist; nobama; obama
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

Obama also supports drivers licenses for illegal aliens, something 75% of New Yorkers opposed when Gov Spitzer tried to push that on us.


21 posted on 02/17/2008 7:46:34 AM PST by FUMETTI (Hillary, burn those pantsuits)
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To: The Forgotten Man
When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and Smiley shirts. —George Carlin

As to his economic plans? Bill Maher says it best, “...,fascism is when corporations become government.”

I too fear deeply for my country this election cycle. We are in deep troubled waters. What we need to start doing is clearly drawing the parallels of the liberal agenda to fascism.

22 posted on 02/17/2008 7:47:24 AM PST by EBH ( J. Galt for President)
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To: Don Corleone
No it is not the third world.

It is the Third Way Comrade.

23 posted on 02/17/2008 7:48:45 AM PST by EBH ( J. Galt for President)
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To: jdm
Would that make him the first Leftist President?

Hardly. Apparently the author never heard of some famous people named Roosevelt, Johnson, Carter and Clinton.

24 posted on 02/17/2008 7:54:14 AM PST by InterceptPoint
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To: originalbuckeye

GUEVARISTAS POR OBAMA

CHE: “THE US IS THE GREAT ENEMY OF MANKIND

“The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving,”

“South American peasants are simply little animals.”

“Mexicans are a rabble of illiterate Indians.”

Imagine a Republican Campaign Volunteer with a David Duke Banner!!

Newsmax ^ | 2/13/.08 | Humberto Fontova

During recent interviews of Obama campaign workers on Houston’s Fox TV station, the offices of two Texas Obama campaign volunteers (including a precinct captain and head of the “Houston Obama Leadership Team”) were found prominently decorated with Che Guevara images, against the backdrop of Cuban flags.

The MSM kept mum, but the conservative blogoshere spread the story. Intrepid blogger Henry Gomez (Babalu Blog), uncovered 15 different pages of Che Guevara well-wishers on the official Obama campaign site.

Two days after the Fox TV airing the Obama campaign finally went on record and in a terse statement described the Houston office posters as “inappropriate.”

“The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind!” raved Ernesto “Che” Guevara in 1961. “Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination. We will bring the war to the imperialist enemies’ very home, to his places of work and recreation. The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we’ll destroy him! We must keep our hatred against them [the U.S.] alive and fan it to paroxysms!”

Compared to Che Guevara, Ahmadinejad sounds like the Dalai Lama.

On Nov. 17, 1962, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI discovered that Che Guevara’s bombast had substance. They infiltrated and cracked a plot by Cuban agents that targeted Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. The holocaust was set to go off the following week, the day after Thanksgiving. Che Guevara was the head of Cuba’s “Foreign Liberation Department” at the time.

A little perspective: for the March 2004 Madrid subway blasts, all 10 of them that killed and maimed almost 2,000 people, al-Qaida used a grand total of 100 kilos of TNT. Castro and Che’s agents planned to set off five times that explosive power in the some of the biggest department stores on earth, all packed to suffocation and pulsing
with holiday cheer on the year’s biggest shopping day.

A month earlier (during what came to be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis) Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had salivated over the prospect of a much more satisfying holocaust. “Say hello to my little friends!” they dreamt of yelling at the Yankee “hyenas,” right before the mushroom clouds. But for the prudence of the Butcher of Budapest (Nikita Khrushchev) they might have pulled it off.

Despite the diligent work of Camelot court scribes and their ever-eager acolytes in the MSM, publishing and Hollywood, most serious analysts conclude that Fidel and Che’s genocidal fantasy was a much bigger factor in Khrushchev’s decision to yank the missiles from Cuba than Kennedy’s utterly bogus bluster, threats and “blockade.”

“The solutions to the world’s problems lie behind the Iron Curtain,” stressed Ernesto Che Guevara who often signed his correspondence with the moniker “Stalin II.” “If the nuclear missiles had remained we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City,” he boasted. “The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.”

But don’t misinterpret Che Guevara’s bluster with actual bravery. His stock in trade was the mass-murder of defenseless men and boys—bound and gagged is how he demanded his victims. On Oct. 8 1967, upon finally encountering armed and determined enemies, Che quickly dropped his fully-loaded weapons and whimpered: “Don’t Shoot! I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!”
Che Guevara’s regime also shattered, through executions, jailings, mass larceny and exile, virtually every family on the island of Cuba.

Many opponents of the Cuban regime qualify as the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history, having suffered prison camps, forced labor and torture chambers for a period three times as long in Che Guevara’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenytzin suffered in Stalin’s Gulag. But please, please, please don’t bother looking for any History Channel, NPR, or 20/20 interviews with these heroes. They were victims’ of the left’s premier poster boys, you see.

The regime Che Guevara co-founded stole the savings and property of 6.4 million citizens, made refugees of 20 percent of the population from a nation formerly deluged with immigrants and whose citizens had achieved a higher standard of living than those residing in half of Europe.
Under Che Guevara’s rule “change,” indeed came to Cuba.

Imagine, say, Huckabee campaign volunteers in, say, Possum Gulch Ark., discovered with their offices displaying David Duke (who despite his looney ravings has killed no one, and who, as far as I know, has never advocated the nuclear extermination of the U.S. population) posters.

Do you think there might be a media hullabaloo, with the attendant extortion rackets by “civil rights leaders”?
Do you think that a campaign spokersperson’s lame exculpation of these Duke posters as “inappropriate” would suffice— would call of the dogs?

We all know better. The orgy of self-flagellation, groveling, hoop-jumping, and whimpering (not that they would have gotten it) demanded from any Republican candidate would have made Dom Imus’ recent antics look like Ollie North in front of the Iran-Contra hearings.
Now, what might Ernesto “Che” Guevara himself thought of Obama’s campaign and his campaign workers (volunteers and otherwise)? His own writings and utterings give a strong clue:

“The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving,”

“South American peasants are simply little animals.”

“Mexicans are a rabble of illiterate Indians.”

*****************
Humberto Fontova is the author of “Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful idiots Who Idolize Him.” visit www.hfontova.com


25 posted on 02/17/2008 8:10:21 AM PST by Dqban22
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To: jdm

26 posted on 02/17/2008 8:12:54 AM PST by The_Macallan
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To: jdm

I see our history repeating itself. Jimmy Carter part II. God help us all if this guy BS’s his way into the WH as Carter did with a grin on his face, and his hand in his pocket.


27 posted on 02/17/2008 8:16:09 AM PST by rockinqsranch (Dems, Libs, Socialists...call 'em what you will...They ALL have fairies livin' in their trees.)
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To: jdm
He's just a cut & run, tax & spend liberal...repackaged.
28 posted on 02/17/2008 8:30:46 AM PST by FrankR (Finally, the democrats "allow" a black man to be a candidate...only 50 years later....)
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To: jdm

btt


29 posted on 02/17/2008 8:31:14 AM PST by Cacique (quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat ( Islamia Delenda Est ))
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To: xtinct

Barak Obama-Marxist, socialist!


30 posted on 02/17/2008 8:32:05 AM PST by ronnie raygun (Id rather be hunting with dick than driving with ted)
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To: jdm

Of course he’s a leftist. So is Hillary. So is McCain. Choose your poison.


31 posted on 02/17/2008 8:33:27 AM PST by Luke21
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

ping


32 posted on 02/17/2008 8:36:39 AM PST by JessieHelmsJr
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To: jdm

“Leftist” is understating the case. Obama is a closet Socialist well trained in the Saul Alinsky {Rules for Radicals} techniques. Alinsky’s goal was to overthrow our Constitutional system of government and create a a kind of Socialist state with Alinsky and his acolytes in charge. The idea is for revolutionaries to clean up their image and infiltrate respectable institutions such as churches, unions and political parties. According to Richard Poe, “Trained by Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation, Obama spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinskyite group called the Developing Communities Project. Later, he worked with ACORN and its offshoot Project Vote, both creations of the Alinsky network.” Mrs. Clinton was an Alinsky protege as well, but left his side to attend Yale law school, where she met her husband. Oh, and anyone who has anything to do with ACORN is both vile and dishonest.


33 posted on 02/17/2008 8:39:36 AM PST by 3AngelaD (They screwed up their own countries so bad they had to leave, and now they're here screwing up ours)
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To: jdm

I guess it escaped their notice, so is John McCain.


34 posted on 02/17/2008 8:51:42 AM PST by MNJohnnie (http://www.iraqvetsforcongress.com ---- Get involved, make a difference.)
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To: tomnbeverly
Wow, this is scary stuff....Obama as President would be America’s worst nightmare. No wonder Mexico and probably every other Third world dictatorship relishes the very thought of us having a FAR LEFT OF LEFTIST guy as President.

And when I see the clips of him and his supporters...mindless twits, caught up in a CULTIST display of support of this guy...chances are they don’t have a CLUE as to what they are supporting.Change appears to be the buzz word....but change just for the sake of change can be very dangerous....it could bean "jumping out of the frying pan into the fire." It's fearful to think we have enough in this country to support a guy spouting the drivel that Hussein Obama speaks.

Is this what the dumbing down of the schools has brought us to...undoubtedly there’s not much love of America being taught...next to no History or gov....and what is being taught is revamped to suit the left leaning crowd that seems to have wormed their way to positions of power in most all the places that count.

What I wouldn't’t give to have had a man in the White House the last 8 years who didn’t have his own agenda that he’s hell bent to cram down the American peoples’ throat, no matter how resistant we are to it. And now look at our choices. I swore I wouldn't’t vote for the lesser of two evils and look at the choices we have.

There’s something really “rotten in Denmark”from a voters perspective, when a country as great as ours, with some really good people who love America, our Constitution etc.are continually left at election time with, dare I say crap from both parties to choose from.

35 posted on 02/17/2008 8:57:12 AM PST by Molly T. (Not voting for the lesser of two evils, been there, done that...)
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To: EBH
Well said. We have created a culture that does not think for the good of the country. It is a narcissistic view that is promoted and accepted as the norm as opposed to the exception. The secular progressives want nothing more than to reshape this nation into one that places them at the beholden head.

These progressives are dangerous and potentially destructive to the freedoms we have be given. The "fellow travelers" have been duped into thinking this is what is best for them at the expense of the freedoms fought for by our forefathers. Most of the current progressive have no clue as to the history and beginnings of their movement. It is way too scary....

36 posted on 02/17/2008 8:59:58 AM PST by The Forgotten Man (He works, he votes, generally he prays--but he always pays....)
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To: jdm
And what happens when the federal government sets up a competing pension system for American workers? Do you think that employers will continue to offer pensions, or do you suppose they'll shrug that off and let the government take up the slack instead? We will have created another massive new entitlement system, when we can't afford the ones we have now.

Even worse, the gov't would immediately set income caps on who can participate. As the system became insolvent, the caps would be moved lower and lower. The system would be rigged from the get-go as a wealth transfer mechanism from the "rich" to everybody else. But in short order, the "rich" will be those making more than $50,000 per year. As usual, the "rich" would be left to fend for themselves.

This is precisely what happened to my wife and me with the current fiscal stimulus package -- we are left out in the cold because our joint income is too high. But, with two kids in college and the California cost of living, we are far, far from rich. I'm just forking my contribution over to some schlub who has no income.

37 posted on 02/17/2008 9:01:27 AM PST by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: jdm

Hussein is apt to ride in ona recession which he and the Democongress will “fight” with tremendouds new spending and massive programs which will send the economy really into the tank and with the permanent socialism quickly instituted because of the “recession” and maintained with the help of the millions of new Democrats legalized by fast-track Amnesty the Democrat reign will be permanent and the United States of America will be tumbling down the slope into third world Aztlan and in Ciudad Mexico they will begin to refer to us as Nortemexicanos.


38 posted on 02/17/2008 9:01:41 AM PST by ThanhPhero (di hanh huong den La Vang)
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To: tomnbeverly

That is exactly why he will be hard to beat. Everything bad said about him will be called racist.


39 posted on 02/17/2008 9:05:29 AM PST by Piquaboy (22 year veteran of the Army, Air Force and Navy, Pray for all our military .)
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To: The Forgotten Man
I have to admit, I never thought I would see this day. There is no hiding of their agenda any longer. It is right there for all who have eyes to see.

As usual a FReeper recommended a good book earlier this week. Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg. It finally arrived on Saturday. As usual a few more of my naivete's fall by the wayside.

40 posted on 02/17/2008 9:08:23 AM PST by EBH ( J. Galt for President)
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