The Manchurian President? Once again, Obama is neither a communist nor a socialist!

This is too much. A new book by Aaron Klein, of World Net Daily, tries to make the case that President Obama is a creation of radical communists and socialists who mentored him, built his political career, and now control his policies. The book is entitled The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and other Anti-American Extremists.

The Manchurian President…unmasks exclusively important aspects of Obama’s carefully covered-up college years, with new details of his student career at Occidental College, and later at Columbia University.

Obama’s associations with the Nation of Islam, Black Liberation Theology and to black political extremists are also revealed, with extensive new information on these subjects.

Also detailed are Obama’s deep ties to ACORN — much more extensive than previously documented elsewhere. The book crucially describes how a socialist-led, ACORN-affiliated union helped facilitate Obama’s political career and now exerts major influence in the White House.

In one chapter, the book unmasks the extremists among Obama’s “czars” and other top advisers, including new information linking Axelrod and Jarrett to communist activists.

The many issues pertaining to Obama’s eligibility to be President are carefully examined and given a much more extensive analysis than in previous works, including questions about Obama’s birth documentation and whether or not he legally qualifies as a “natural-born citizen” according to the U.S. Constitution.

The Manchurian President also exposes how Obama’s healthcare policy, masked by moderate, populist rhetoric, was pushed along and partially crafted by extremists, some of whom reveal in their own words that their principal aim is to achieve corporate socialist goals and a vast increase in government powers.

Oh really? Then please explain to me why Obama is pushing a right wing Republican agenda. The man isn’t even a liberal Democrat. He isn’t even a moderate Democrat. If he’s any kind of Democrat, he’s a Reagan Democrat. But to me he seems more like a Reagan Republican.

Obama is anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-freedom of speech, pro-war, pro-torture, pro-NSA spying, pro-Wall Street, and pro-privatization of Social Security. How can anyone claim that is a communist/socialist agenda?

I swear, sometimes I just want to start tearing my hair and run screaming into the street. This country has gone insane.

Who kidnapped Chuckles the Clown?

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Paul Krugman heroically battles an army of strawmen:

The Oil Spill Is Obama’s Fault

No, I haven’t lost my mind — that’s not what I believe. But you know that’s what the talk-show hosts will be saying soon, if they haven’t already started. The only question is what the story will be.

Will it be claims that liberals and/or scientific conspirators sabotaged the rig, to undermine good Americans who want to drillheredrillnow? (Michael Crichton already wrote that novel).

Will it be that oil workers, demoralized by the march of socialism, fell into despair and let the accident happen?

Will it be claims that since this didn’t happen under Bush, it obviously shows that Obamanomics is responsible?

I don’t know. But you know something along these lines is coming.

Funny, but I don’t recall anyone blaming G-Dubya for Katrina. I do recall people blaming the Village Idiot of Texas for not being prepared and for fucking up the recovery afterward though:

So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.

First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago – and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you’d expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help – and help wasn’t provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.

There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn’t they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government’s response.

Barack Obama is the current chief executive of our federal government. He wanted the job and now he’s got it. He will be the person responsible for how the federal government responds to the huge oil spill south of NOLA. He will sink or swim according to what he does and/or fails to do.

Right now we need to fix the problem, not the blame.

Uncle Bob Somerby sez:

What have they done with the real Paul Krugman: Heroically, we’ve been warning you about this. What have they done with Paul Krugman?

[…]

We’re reminded of the famous old Superman episode. Some criminals kidnap the real Chuckles the Clown, then send a look-alike “Chuckles” to steal the children’s money.

Kidnapping a clown? Oh, the humanity!

Saturday Morning News and Views: May Day Edition

Beltane Fire Ritual, Edinburgh, Scotland

Happy May Day, Conflucians!! It’s the feast of Beltane. In Edinburgh, 12,000 people gathered for the Beltane Fire Festival spring rituals. Here is a little information on the pagan holiday:

By Celtic reckoning, the actual Beltane celebration begins on sundown of the preceding day, April 30, because the Celts always figured their days from sundown to sundown. And sundown was the proper time for Druids to kindle the great Bel-fires on the tops of the nearest beacon hill (such as Tara Hill, Co. Meath, in Ireland). These “need-fires” had healing properties, and skyclad Witches would jump through the flames to ensure protection.

Frequently, cattle would be driven between two such bonfires (oak wood was the favorite fuel for them) and, on the morrow, they would be taken to their summer pastures.

Other May Day customs include: processions of chimney-sweeps and milk maids, archery tournaments, morris dances, sword dances, feasting, music, drinking, and maidens bathing their faces in the dew of May morning to retain their youthful beauty.

In the words of Witchcraft writers Janet and Stewart Farrar, the Beltane celebration was principly a time of “…unashamed human sexuality and fertility.” Such associations include the obvious phallic symbolism of the Maypole and riding the hobby horse. Even a seemingly innocent children’s nursery rhyme, “Ride a cock horse to Banburry Cross…” retain such memories. And the next line “…to see a fine Lady on a white horse” is a reference to the annual ride of “Lady Godiva” though Coventry. Every year for nearly three centuries, a sky-clad village maiden (elected Queen of the May) enacted this Pagan rite, until the Puritans put an end to the custom.

May Day is also an important day for the labor movement.

At its national convention in Chicago, held in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which later became the American Federation of Labor), proclaimed that “eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.” The following year, the FOTLU, backed by many Knights of Labor locals, reiterated their proclamation stating that it would be supported by strikes and demonstrations. At first, most radicals and anarchists regarded this demand as too reformist, failing to strike “at the root of the evil.” A year before the Haymarket Massacre, Samuel Fielden pointed out in the anarchist newspaper, The Alarm, that “whether a man works eight hours a day or ten hours a day, he is still a slave.”

Despite the misgivings of many of the anarchists, an estimated quarter million workers in the Chicago area became directly involved in the crusade to implement the eight hour work day, including the Trades and Labor Assembly, the Socialistic Labor Party and local Knights of Labor. As more and more of the workforce mobilized against the employers, these radicals conceded to fight for the 8-hour day, realizing that “the tide of opinion and determination of most wage-workers was set in this direction.” With the involvement of the anarchists, there seemed to be an infusion of greater issues than the 8-hour day. There grew a sense of a greater social revolution beyond the more immediate gains of shortened hours, but a drastic change in the economic structure of capitalism.

Back here in the 21st Century, it’s been quite a week for news.

Jury says “prank” was a felony

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From the Knoxville News-Sentinal:

A federal jury this afternoon convicted Sarah Palin e-mail intruder David C. Kernell of felony destruction of records to hamper a federal investigation and misdemeanor unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer.

The jury acquitted Kernell, 22, of felony wire fraud.

U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Phillips declared a mistrial on another charge, felony identity theft, after the jurors said they were hopelessly deadlocked.

The felony records destruction charge carries a maximum possible 20-year prison sentence, which is virtually certain not to be applied in this case. Federal sentencing guidelines that would apply in this case set a range of 15 to 21 months and allow for probation.

Cue the Obot concern trolls lamenting that “real” criminals escape justice.