Free Republic

I recently read the new biography of Trotsky by Oxford don Robert Service, published in 2009 by Pan Books. It is well-written and surprisingly interesting. The book does a great public service in describing the life of the actual Trotsky, whose previous “biographies” were little more than hagiographies written by his toady worshippers (people like Isaac Deutscher). The last time that I had taken any interest in Trotsky was when I was a teenager and had fleeting delusions of believing in “socialism.” Reading the new book as an adult and as an economist, I found it a useful opportunity to...

Why has the American society changed so drastically in the past few decades? How did the feminist movement get started? How did Obama get elected? Why are there so many single parent families? Where is God?

GAMALIEL FOUNDATION DECEIVES CATHOLIC FUNDING AGENCY The Reform CCHD Now Coalition (RCN) Uncovers Fraud and Deception By Network of Grantees Receiving Catholic Funds WASHINGTON, DC – The 24 member Reform CCHD Now Coalition (RCN) released its latest report on organizations receiving funds from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). The 2012 report reveals that one of the CCHD’s longest-running grant recipients, the Gamaliel Foundation, attempted to deceive the CCHD regarding its relationship with an organization promoting homosexuality. Beginning in 2010, RCN has investigated organizations receiving funds from the CCHD, reporting on grantees that promote abortion, homosexuality, birth control and...

The former Texas ACORN chapter has a new name and a scheme to collect donations and divert them for political use in a way that abuses tax laws governing charitable organizations, according to a Washington-based public interest group. Cause of Action, a nonprofit taxpayer watchdog, charged in a letter to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration that the tax-exempt Texas Organizing Project (TOP), formed from the ashes of scandal-ridden ACORN, is using money funneled to it by a closely associated group called the Texas Organizing Project Education Fund for political activity. The fund gave nearly 80 percent of its...

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign website has removed several videos that pitched alarmist messages to African-American voters, following reporting by The Daily Caller and the Fox News Channel. In one video that the campaign yanked from the “African-Americans for Obama” section of its website Tuesday, actress Tatyana Ali seemed to predict that a second Obama term would bring a host of benefits to African-Americans once the president no longer had to concern himself with campaigning.

[Snippets -- read it ALL] ....Born in 1909, Alinsky was a left-wing activist with a streak of ruthless political realism. After studying criminology at the University of Chicago, he went into union organizing, and found it too tame. His “approach to social justice,” in the words of the Washington Post, would come to rely instead on “generating conflict to mobilize the dispossessed.”.... ....His most enduring influence may have been to inspire the National Education Association to become a political powerhouse. Sam Lambert, the executive secretary of the NEA in 1967, when it hired Alinsky as a political trainer, boasted that...

Imagine you come upon a child under 10 years old who, along with his friends, is in obvious distress. Now imagine, when you ask that child what you can do to help him, he turns to you and says, with all seriousness, “It is better if you can kill us…” What in the name of all that is holy could cause a child that young so much stress and fear in his life, that given a choice, he would have you kill him as an act of kindness? Meet Jacob, the unsuspecting star of Youtube’s most viral video to date...

Here is the link to the just-issued-warning to Japanese residents and visitors in New York City by their Consulate to stay away from those "Occupy" people. LINK

Learn who Alinsky was and why he matters. Expanded coverage of how to counteract each of the tactics. Should you use these methods? Why the most popular tactics are not the most effective. General tips to make you better on twitter and Facebook along with methods to combat Alinsky tactics in social media. Methods to win arguments with Liberals, ways to drive them nuts, and how to keep them from driving you nuts. How to spot Obama for America (OFA) and not waste your time with them. Recognizing the Left’s big players and how they influence others. A full chapter...

Ten Septembers have come and gone since that awful morning. But on this 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we are summoned once more to honor those we lost by keeping our country strong and true to their memory. Over the coming days, we will remember nearly 3,000 innocent victims — fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters who were simply going about their daily lives on a beautiful Tuesday morning. And we'll talk to our children about what happened on that day, and what's happened since. Like every American, I'll never forget how I heard the terrible...

<p>Supposed to commemorate this?</p>

Says it was mistake to mock community organizing background

As families around the country get together to celebrate fathers today, I'm thinking about dads like Alex. Alex is the father of two boys and two girls, ages six to 13. During the week, he works the 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift as a front-desk supervisor at a Seattle hotel. After work and on the weekends, he devotes his time to a summer organizing program that's giving more than 1,500 first-time organizers the training they need to help build this movement in their communities. He says he hopes this organizing work will help teach his kids the power one...

America has become the despised superhero Among nations, we really are a superhero.  We assimilate immigrants like no other nation, we come to the aid of everybody, destroy dictators and kill bad guys...  Our frightful military prowess is unrivaled. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished We've earned nothing but hatred for our efforts.  We are Batman, fighting nihilistic Jokers but pissing everybody off in the process.  They level charges of torture, illegal prisons and habitually bombing Muslim wedding parties and killing innocent civilians. We are excoriated for invading Iraq and Afghanistan...  by the same crowd that urges us to kill Khadaffi...

“The Tea Party is the most exciting political movement of my lifetime,” Bellow recently told CNN. “I say that as someone who was around during the 60s and was in many ways a product of that decade.” The mission of “Voices of the Tea Party,” in the words of Broadside Books’ website, is to connect readers and writers to those “citizen activists” Bellow mentioned: Readers and writers alike can thereby join important national discussion within this ever-expanding community of citizen activists who have dedicated themselves to securing the movements’ core values of constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility and free markets....

As the world watches Egypt crumble into chaos, with over 100 dead and 2000 injured, the Obama administration continues to be somewhat and rather curiously ambivalent. On the one hand, on Friday, Vice President Biden came to the defense of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, saying that he shouldn’t step aside. Yet, on the same day, the Telegraph (ala Wikileaks) reported that the U.S. had planned "regime change" for the "past three years" while both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton demand that internet be restored to the Egyptian protesters. This morning, Secretary of State Clinton again clarified the United...

Looks like all those years of performing for Democratic candidates has paid off: President Obama is tapping rocker Jon Bon Jovi to serve on a new presidential advisory council. The White House announced Tuesday that Bon Jovi (or is it just Jovi?) will join the new 25-member White House Council for Community Solutions, a panel established to provide advice on "the best ways to mobilize citizens, nonprofits, businesses and government to work more effectively together to solve specific community needs."(continued)

A troubling headline at the Cincinnati Enquirer: Schism develops over Catholic campaignA 'schism' is a clear break in the Church as a response to heresy. 'Heresy' is a clear rejection of a dogma of the Church. Rich Leonardi, of Ten Reasons, is quoted: "The groups funded are consistently highly political and always political in one direction." And... "You end up with these very hard left groups with a very partisan agenda." Does that indicate a charge of 'heresy'? It's debatable. Tony Stieritz, director of social action at the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, whose office Mr. Leonardi claims "sponsored a talk by a...

At LifeSiteNews there’s an intriguing report about happenings within the Chicago office of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development [CCHD]. I recommend the article in full, but would like to make a few observations. Rey Flores did a lot to reform Chicago CCHD. I appreciate the good reforms he made there and wish he had not been fired from his job. Having said that, it is not okay to continue to fund community organizing such as the protests against the Arizona Diamondbacks. (See here for my report at NewsRealBlog on that.) I was told by more than one friend within...

How to Create a Crisis and Steal a NationBy Aristotle the Hun, The Rev. Big Goon and Good Shepherd Sam Note: It will quickly be obvious to the reader why details have been obscured, omitted or fictionalized in this narrative of events that began nearly forty years ago. "Se non è vero, è ben trovato." Even small children know how to get what they want by creating a crisis. Witness any “temper tantrum.” My wife and I teach parenting skills. One of our sayings which we recommend to parents when dealing with a child’s “crisis strategy” is: “Poor planning...