Friday, July 31, 2015




INTERESTING 

  1. The sport of choice 
for the urban poor
 is BASKETBALL.
  
2. The sport of choice for 
maintenance level employees 
is BOWLING.
  
3. The sport of choice for 
front-line workers 
is FOOTBALL.

 4. The sport of choice 
for supervisors 
is BASEBALL.

 5. The sport of choice 
for middle management 
is TENNIS

  6. The sport of choice for 
corporate executives and 
officers is GOLF.


  
The most amazing aspect of this 
survey is the higher you climb in the 
corporate-government world, 
the smaller your balls become.
  
There must be a massive tanker load 
of people in Washington, DC 
playing MARBLES! 



The Republican Establishment 
plays with BB's!

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Realistic Assessment 
of a 
Rotten Situation 
or 
RABID RACISM RUN AMOK?



HOWEVER UNFLATTERING 
it may be
The TRUTH is NOT HATE SPEECH

Monday, July 27, 2015



WHAT WE ARE UP AGAINST
Senate Smackdown: 
Ted Cruz, Mike Lee ... SQUELCHED 
by [GOP] Leaders

The Rift Between Mitch McConnell 
and Ted Cruz Widens.

Senator Cruz arrives Sunday on Capitol Hill


7/26/15 1:52 PM EDT Updated 7/27/15 10:29 AM EDT


Ted Cruz just wanted a roll-call vote on Sunday. Instead, he got a smackdown.
Republican leaders, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), delivered what senators described as punishment for Cruz’s brazen floor tactics — the Texas senator first accused McConnell of lying and later sought to change Senate procedures in order to push for an Iran-related amendment.

So when Cruz came to the floor looking for at least 11 senators to agree to hold a roll-call vote, only three raised their hands. McConnell, sitting at his desk, turned around and peered at Cruz, who looked stunned at what had just happened. The Senate dispensed with his effort by a voice vote and quickly moved on, doing the same to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a Cruz ally who sought to use arcane procedures to force a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood.
It all went down in an instant, but the message was clear: If Cruz doesn’t want to play nice with his Republican colleagues, they will respond in kind.
“You learn that in kindergarten: You learn to work well together and play by the rules, said Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a close McConnell ally who was beaming after Cruz and Lee were handed such lopsided defeats. “Another thing you learn in kindergarten is to respect one another.”

The rebuke was the latest in an increasingly testy rivalry marked by accusations of deceit and grandstanding. Cruz, who is running for president, has sought to use his battles with his colleagues — on everything from the 2013 government shutdown to last year’s battle over the debt ceiling — to tell conservatives that he’s the one candidate who will take on an entrenched party leadership. But Republican senators view Cruz as a divisive figure who is only seeking to lift his profile by waging war with his colleagues.
Cruz, his voice rising, tore into McConnell just off the Senate floor.
“Granting a sufficient second for a roll-call vote is done customarily in the United States Senate,” Cruz told reporters. “Denying it is extraordinary, and it was done as a consequence of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell being afraid of this issue.”
He accused McConnell of scheming with Democratic leader Harry Reid.
“To see the so-called Republican leader whip against allowing a vote to defund Planned Parenthood … makes clear that the McConnell-Reid leadership is united in favor of Big Government,” Cruz charged.
The dispute stems from McConnell’s move on Friday to prioritize two amendments to a bipartisan highway bill: one that would revive the Export-Import Bank and another to repeal Obamacare, both at a 60-vote threshold. Renewing the charter of the Ex-Im Bank has the support of more than 60 senators and the business community. But Cruz and other conservatives say the bank amounts to corporate welfare.
The Senate voted 67-26 to move toward attaching a renewal of the bank charter to a must-pass highway bill. The Obamacare effort failed on party lines, 49-43.
The battle over the government agency stemmed from negotiations over a major trade bill in May. To win the support of three holdouts — Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) — McConnell promised that an effort to extend the Export-Import Bank’s charter would get a vote on the Senate floor.
But in Cruz’s telling, McConnell “looked” him and “every” member of the Senate Republican Conference in the eye and promised that the only assurance he gave was that the senators could offer the bank plan as an amendment on the floor.
On Friday, McConnell took procedural steps to allow the bank plan to be offered as an amendment to the highway bill. Afterward, in a fiery floor speech Friday, Cruz accused McConnell of telling a “flat-out lie” by shifting his plans to move the bank measure.
Republicans were taken aback, noting that the Senate has rules barring members from impugning the integrity of another senator — much less a party leader.
“I think it was a violation of the rules,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). “It’s not how you treat a colleague regardless of how you feel.”
Tillis and several other GOP senators said Cruz’s rhetoric backfired. “Generally speaking,” Tillis said, senators declined to give him a roll-call vote because they disapproved of his name-calling and the risky precedent his tactics would set if he were successful in forcing a vote. A senior Republican senator said refusing to give Cruz a vote was not a coordinated strategy by the leadership: It came about after GOP senators discussed the matter quietly on the floor.
It was a “sign of displeasure” with Cruz, another top Republican said.
“It’s very unfortunate,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said of Cruz calling McConnell a liar. “I know emotions run high on issues in the Senate, and those are the times when I think we have to take special care to abide by the rules of the Senate, particularly Rule 19, which is very clear that no senator is to impugn the integrity of another senator.”
Cruz denied that he violated any rules. And he lashed out at the Capitol Hill press corps for not investigating whether McConnell lied.
“In the entire course of this debate neither the majority leader nor any other senator has denied that he looked me in the eye and he looked every other Republican senator in the eye, and he flat-out said” there was “no deal on the Export-Import Bank. But he answered the subsequent question: Will you do anything to press it forward and press a vote?
“He told us this: I haven’t given them anything, I told them they could do what any other senator did. But what we saw on Friday is that statement was on its face objectively false.”
Cruz added: “There have been no stories about whether Mitch McConnell told the truth.”
In interviews, several Republican senators said they could not recall a confrontation between McConnell and Cruz in a party lunch, as Cruz described it on Friday. They also said they were not surprised that McConnell forced a vote on the Export-Import Bank because he’s been saying he would for weeks, publicly and privately.
“There was no misunderstanding,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).
Similarly, Graham said that he went to the floor and told reporters on the day of the trade vote what the deal was: that McConnell would let proponents attach the Ex-Im Bank plan to the highway bill.
“Unless you have been completely missing in action, you’d know this day was coming,” Graham said. “I did a press release and floor statement” reiterating McConnell’s promises.
“I think he’s going down a road very few senators go,” Graham said of Cruz.
“Let’s even assume that he’s right, which he wasn’t, you still don’t do that,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said of Cruz’s floor antics. “My understanding is that Mitch McConnell told us what he was going to do.”
On Friday, Cruz announced his plans to push for his separate Iran amendment that sanctions on the country could not be lifted until the country recognizes Israel’s right to exist and frees four American hostages. His argument: If the leadership can attach unrelated amendments like the Ex-Im measure, senators should be allowed to move on the Iran amendment, as well.
But the process he employed sparked major concerns among Republicans, who worried it would set a dangerous precedent, throw the Senate’s procedures into disarray — and be difficult to explain to voters.
Then Lee tried to push through a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood. That, too, failed to muster enough support for a vote. On Monday, Lee is expected to try to repeal Obamacare with a simple majority vote of 51 senators, effectively circumventing the 60-vote requirement to break a filibuster after Democrats defeated an attempt to repeal the health care law on Sunday.
Cruz’s Texas colleague pointedly shot down his effort. Sen. John Cornyn, the GOP’s chief vote-counter, called Cruz’s strategy “a terrible mistake” and urged Republicans to vote against it, a rare public disagreement.
“If the rule that the junior senator from Texas is arguing for is embraced, we will lose all control of the Senate schedule. There will be chaos,” Cornyn said. “Any senator who wants to get a vote on an amendment will be entitled to do so and that can’t be the rule. It’s not the rule. It’s never been the rule.”

Saturday, July 25, 2015


George Washington in middle age, Rembrandt Peale (?)
Mount Vernon, East Facade facing the Potomac
George Washington and his family, Edward Savage, c. 1793
Martha Washington standing, Gilbert Stuart

A VIRTUAL TOUR 
of 

MOUNT VERNON

Click on the link, follow instructions and enjoy a thorough, intimate view of each room. 
Stay as long as you like.




Mount Vernon, West Facade, today's main entrance
A younger Martha Washington, artist unknown

Friday, July 17, 2015



REPRINT


Cultural Marxism

Key members of the Frankfurt School

By Linda Kimball

American Thinker - February 15, 2007

There are two misconceptions held by many Americans.  The first is that communism ceased to be a threat when the Soviet Union imploded.  The second is that the New Left of the Sixties collapsed and disappeared as well.  "The Sixties are dead," wrote columnist George Will ("Slamming the Doors," Newsweek, Mar. 25, 1991)


Because the New Left lacked cohesion it fell apart as a political movement.  However, its revolutionaries reorganized themselves into a multitude of single issue groups.  Thus we now have for example, radical feminists, black extremists, anti-war ‘peace' activists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, and ‘gay' rights groups.  All of these groups pursue their piece of the radical agenda through a complex network of organizations such as the Gay Straight Lesbian Educators Network (GSLEN), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), People for the American Way, United for Peace and Justice, Planned Parenthood, Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), and Code Pink for Peace.



Both communism and the New Left are alive and thriving here in America. They favor code words: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity, and sensitivity.  All together, this is Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism.


Birth of Multiculturalism


In anticipation of the revolutionary storm that would baptize the world in an inferno of red terror, leading to its rebirth as the promised land of social justice and proletarian equality Frederich Engels wrote, "All the...large and small nationalities are destined to perish...in the revolutionary world storm... (A general war will) wipe out all...nations, down to their very names.  The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only reactionary classes...but...reactionary peoples."  ("The Magyar Struggle," Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Jan. 13, 1849)


By the end of WWI, socialists realized that something was amiss, for the world's proletariat had not heeded Marx's call to rise up in opposition to evil capitalism and to embrace communism instead.  They wondered what had gone wrong.


Separately, two Marxist theorists -- Antonio Gramsci of Italy and Georg Lukacs of Hungary -- concluded that the Christianized West was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist new world order.  The West would have to be conquered first.


Gramsci posited that because Christianity had been dominant in the West for over 2000 years, not only was it fused with Western civilization, but it had corrupted the workers class. The West would have to be de-Christianized, said Gramsci, by means of a "long march through the culture."  Additionally, a new proletariat must be created.  In his "Prison Notebooks," he suggested that the new proletariat be comprised of many criminals, women, and racial minorities.

The new battleground, reasoned Gramsci, must become the culture, starting with the traditional family and completely engulfing churches, schools, media, entertainment, civic organizations, literature, science, and history.  All of these things must be radically transformed and the social and cultural order gradually turned upside-down with the new proletariat placed in power at the top.


The Prototype


In 1919, Georg Lukacs became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the short-lived Bolshevik Bela Kun regime in Hungary. He immediately set plans in motion to de-Christianize Hungary.  Reasoning that if Christian sexual ethics could be undermined among children, then both the hated patriarchal family and the Church would be dealt a crippling blow. Lukacs launched a radical sex education program in the schools. Sex lectures were organized and literature handed out which graphically instructed youth in free love (promiscuity) and sexual intercourse while simultaneously encouraging them to deride and reject Christian moral ethics, monogamy, and parental and church authority.  All of this was accompanied by a reign of cultural terror perpetrated against parents, priests, and dissenters.  


Hungary's youth, having been fed a steady diet of values-neutral (atheism) and radical sex education while simultaneously encouraged to rebel against all authority, easily turned into delinquents ranging from bullies and petty thieves to sex predators, murderers, and sociopaths.

Gramsci's prescription and Lukacs' plans were the precursor to what Cultural Marxism in the guise of SIECUS, GSLEN, and the ACLU--acting as judicially-powered enforcers--later brought into American schools.


Building a base 


In 1923, the Frankfurt School -- a Marxist think-tank-was founded in Weimar Germany.  Among its founders were Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno. The school was a multidisciplinary effort which included sociologists, sexologists, and psychologists.


The primary goal of the Frankfurt School was to translate Marxism from economic terms into cultural terms. It would provide the ideas on which to base a new political theory of revolution based on culture, harnessing new oppressed groups for the faithless proletariat. Smashing religion, morals, It would also build a constituency among academics, who could build careers studying and writing about the new oppression. 


Toward this end, Marcuse-who favored polymorphous perversion-expanded the ranks of Gramsci's new proletariat by including homosexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals.  Into this was spliced Lukacs radical sex education and cultural terrorism tactics.  Gramsci's ‘long march' was added to the mix, and then all of this was wedded to Freudian psychoanalysis and psychological conditioning techniques. The end product was Cultural Marxism, now known in the West as multiculturalism.


Additional intellectual firepower was required: a theory to pathologize what was to be destroyed. In 1950, the Frankfurt School augmented Cultural Marxism with Theodor Adorno's idea of the ‘authoritarian personality.'  This concept is premised on the notion that Christianity, capitalism, and the traditional family create a character prone to racism and fascism. Thus, anyone who upholds America's traditional moral values and institutions is both racist and fascist.  Children raised by traditional values parents, we are told to believe, will almost certainly become racists and fascists.  By extension, if fascism and racism are endemic to America's traditional culture, then everyone raised in the traditions of God, family, patriotism, gun ownership, or free markets is in need of psychological help.


The pernicious influence of Adorno's ‘authoritarian personality' idea can be clearly seen in some of the research that gets public money.


"In Aug., 2003, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the results of their $1.2 million tax-payer funded study.  It stated, essentially, that traditionalists are mentally disturbed.  Scholars from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford had determined that social conservatives...suffer from ‘mental rigidity,' ‘dogmatism,' and ‘uncertainty avoidance,' together with associated indicators for mental illness." http://www.edwatch.org/  ‘Social and Emotional Learning" Jan. 26, 2005)  


The Orwellian cast of the pathologies named shows how far Gramsci's long march has led us.  


A corresponding and diabolically crafted idea is political correctness.  The strong suggestion here is that in order for one not to be thought of as racist or fascist, then one must not only be nonjudgmental but must also embrace the ‘new' moral absolutes: diversity, choice, sensitivity, sexual orientation, and tolerance.  Political correctness is a Machiavellian psychological ‘command and control' device.  Its purpose is the imposition of uniformity in thought, speech, and behavior.


Critical theory is yet another psychological ‘command and control' device.  As stated by Daniel J. Flynn, "Critical Theory, as its name implies, criticizes.  What deconstruction does to literature, Critical Theory does to societies."  (Intellectual Morons, p 15-16)


Critical Theory is an ongoing and brutal assault via vicious criticism relentlessly leveled against Christians, Christmas, the Boy Scouts, Ten Commandments, our military, and all other aspects of traditional American culture and society. 


Both political correctness and Critical Theory are in essence, psychological bullying.  They are the psycho-political battering rams by which Frankfurt School disciples such as the ACLU are forcing Americans to submit to and to obey the will and the way of the Left.  These devious devices are but psychological versions of Georg Lukacs and Laventi Beria's ‘cultural terrorism' tactics.  In the words of Beria,


"Obedience is the result of force...Force is the antithesis of humanizing actions.  It is so synonymous in the human mind with savageness, lawlessness, brutality, and barbarism, that it is only necessary to display an inhuman attitude toward people to be granted by those people the possessions of force." (The Russian Manual on Psychopolitics: Obedience, by Laventi Beria, head of Soviet Secret Police and Stalin's right-hand man)


Double-thinking ‘fence-sitters', otherwise known as moderates, centrists, and RINOs bear the imprint of these psychological ‘obedience' techniques.  These people-in some cases literally afraid of incurring the wrath of name-calling obedience trainers--- have opted to straddle the fence lest they be found guilty of possessing an opinion, one way or another.  At the merest hint of displeasure from the obedience-trainers, up goes the yellow flag of surrender upon which it is boldly written: 

"I believe in nothing and am tolerant of everything!"


Cultural Determinism

The linchpin of Cultural Marxism is cultural determinism, the parent of identity politics and group solidarity.  In its turn, cultural determinism was birthed by the Darwinian idea that man is but a soulless animal and therefore his identity is determined by for example, his skin color or his sexual and/or erotic preferences.  This proposition rejects the concepts of the human spirit, individuality, free will, and morally informed conscience (paired with personal accountability and responsibility) because it emphatically denies the existence of the God of the Bible.  


Consequently, and by extension, it also rejects the first principles of our liberty enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.  These are our "unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."     Cultural Marxism must reject these because these principles of liberty "are endowed by our Creator," who made man in His image.


Cultural determinism, states David Horowitz, is "identity politics-the politics of radical feminism, queer revolution, and Afro-centrism-which is the basis of academic multiculturalism...a form of intellectual fascism and, insofar as it has any politics, of political fascism as well."  (Mussolini and Neo-Fascist Tribalism: Up from Multiculturalism, by David Horowitz, Jan. 1998) 


It is said that courage is the first of the virtues because without it fear will paralyze man, thus keeping him from acting upon his moral convictions and speaking truth.  Thus bringing about a general state of paralyzing fear, apathy, and submission-the chains of tyranny-is the purpose behind psychopolitical cultural terrorism, for the communist Left's revolutionary agenda must, at all costs, be clothed in darkness.


The antidote is courage and the light of truth.  If we are to win this cultural war and reclaim and rebuild America so our children and their children's children can live in a ‘Shining City on the Hill' where liberty, families, opportunity, free markets, and decency flourish, we must muster the courage to fearlessly expose the communist Left's revolutionary agenda to the Light of Truth.    Truth and the courage to speak it will set us free.


Additional References


Slouching Toward Gomorrah, by Robert H. Bork

Intellectual Morons, by Daniel J. Flynn


Related Articles


Trotsky's ‘Permanent Revolution' in America

Exposing America's Enemies, Part 2: Communist Progressive Democrats

Exposing America's Enemies: the ‘Social Justice Seeking' Communist Left


Linda Kimball writes on culture, politics, and worldview. 

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/archived-articles/../2007/02/cultural_marxism.html at September 12, 2011 - 05:59:04 PM CDT

Tuesday, July 14, 2015


Uh! OH! 
OREO!

Alpharetta Methodist 
Collects 5.4 Tons of Oreos
Goes to Military Overseas

July 6, 2015 12:21 pm

ALPHARETTA, Ga. – For anyone wondering what more than 5 tons of Oreo cookies looks like, ask the congregation of the Alpharetta First United Methodist Church.
With strong community support, Alpharetta First UMC collected 5.64 tons of Oreos for U.S. service members stationed in the Middle East. It was a record number for the church, which has conducted “Operation Oreo” every summer since 2009. This year’s goal was 4 tons of cookies, but a strong outpouring of support from local businesses, churches and individuals pushed the final cookie count well past the original target.
“The community and Alpharetta Methodist are to be applauded for their generous gift to the troops in the Middle East,” said Senior Pastor Dr. Don Martin. “These Oreos are a sweet and tangible sign of our love and support for the brave men and women who serve in a dangerous land. May God protect them until they come home to a grateful nation.” ...
Congregations at Chamblee, Roswell, North Springs, Mt. Pisgah, Bethelview, Cannon and Simpsonwood United Methodist Churches collected hundreds of packages each. In addition, members of Boy Scouts Troop 69 and Cub Scout Pack 459 donated cookies ...
Alpharetta Methodist is located at 69 North Main Street in downtown Alpharetta. For more information about Operation Oreo, please visit afumc.org/oreo.
READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE:

A LEFTIST REACTS

I detect not-so-subtle }}}}}}}} RACISM {{{{{{{{  here.

Don't you remember? Black people call other black people –– such as Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Walter Williams, Star Parker, Ben Carson and Thomas Sowell –– who cooperate with and try successfully to emulate white people, OREOS, because "they're black on the outside, but white on the inside."

And no, to leftist agitators, mercy freaks, grievance junkies and chronic malcontents it's not a joke. I am frankly amazed a complaint has not already been lodged and a lawsuit already put in the works against this huge, racially-motivated SLUR thinly disguised as charity.

There are a great many African-Americans in the armed forces many of them continually In Harm’s Way. How do you think this phony charitable gesture has made THEM feel?

The Alpharetta Methodists should be stripped forever of their tax-free status and made to pay reparations to those poor, beleaguered African Americans who have been insulted, grievously harmed and traumatized –– possibly forever –– by this crass racist gesture. I'll bet most of the so-called Methodists involved are secret members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Expect more of this sort of outrage from Southerners who are royally pissed off about the forced removal of the Virginia Confederate Battle Flag from the grounds of the South Carolina State House.

The Gift of even a single Oreo should now be considered the modern equivalent of a Cross Burning. The gift of TONS of these nasty little Icons of Racial Prejudice is more like a LYNCHING.

We should DEMAND a March on Washington from all people of good conscience to INSIST that Oreos be REMOVED from every grocery store in the land. The product is worse than the Gold Dust Twins, Little Black Sambo, Amos 'n Andy, and Aunt Jemima COMBINED. It MUST be BANNED before widespread rioting, looting, arson and wholesale murder break out nationwide.

I, personally, am so incensed I pledge not to rest, and will refuse to eat, till every single Oreo Cookie and every trace of the packaging that once housed these vile Emblems of Hate and Oppression, and every perverse piece of advertising that ever touted them have been rounded up, brought to Washington, DC, and INCINERATED in a BONFIRE set ablaze at the base of the Capitol Steps –– an event that must be thoroughly documented by the forces of CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, C-Span, The New York Times, the Washington Post and The Nation COMBINED.

Shame on you for finding this outrage the LEAST BIT amusing. It is NOT, it is APPALLING.




~ FreeThinke