"You paid into Medicare for years," the voiceover says. "Every paycheck. Now when you need it, Obama has cut $716 billion from Medicare. Why? To pay for ObamaCare. So now the money you paid for your guaranteed health care is going to a massive new government program that's not for you."
And Remember:Nobody 55 or older will be affected by any Medicare changes made, but the program will be bankrupt by 2024 for people younger if nothing is done or changed! Ryan’s plan will save the program for those under 55-years of age.
The campaign plans a large buy with this ad in important swing state media markets.
President Obama cannot run on his record, so he is committed to tearing down Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Obama’s campaign tried to use the tragedy of a woman's death for political gain. Then, Obama’s top campaign aides were caught lying about it. Doesn't America deserve better than a president who will do and say anything to stay in power, regardless of the truth?
Ryan Bomberger of SoOutLoud.com is out with Get Out, a catchy pop tune that skewers Barack Obama for his “slick marketing” and for being “fast and furious with all the lies,” referring to the “Fast and Furious” scandal.
Bomberger suggests that people were tricked by Obama’s “slick marketing.” He sings, “the slick marketing, a logo that promised everything, but hope and change meant you hoped to change my constitutional liberty.”
He sings repeatedly amid copious images of the Obama-campaign symbol: “You gotta get out, you need to get out. BHO’s gotta go don’t you know. Yes we can kick him out.”
The chorus is featured three times in less than two minutes and finds every way possible to tell Obama to “get out.” Bomberger urges his listeners, “Don’t you know, yes we can, vote him out.”
The song also mocks Obama for backing the redefinition of marriage and for making “sure that religious liberty doesn’t mean a thing.”
He blames Obama for “spend[ing] billions to make a worse economy” and forcing Americans to choose “prison or your Obamacare policy.”
Also, Bomberger admits in the song that he is biracial like Obama and then adds, “racial profiling is okay if it’s a vote for you.”
The catchy tune should strike a chord with young voters my engaging them on their level.
This presentation of the movie SICK & SICKER is sponsored by the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons. However, instant downloads, DVDs and screening packages are available at http://www.sickandsickermovie.com or by calling 310-795-2509.
Where will ObamaCare lead America?
Logan Darrow Clements shows what happens when "the government becomes your doctor" using licensed news footage from Canadian TV, interviews with doctors, patients, journalists, a health minister, a Member of Parliament, a doctor who went on a hunger strike as well the producer's own Canadian relatives. Clements even rents a hospital to show the mismatch between supply and demand in a medical system run by politicians. SICK and SICKER puts ObamaCare on ice with cold hard facts from Canada. (widescreen, color, 50 minutes)
This is an important watch, if you haven’t seen it, and timely since the Supreme Court of the United States is hearing arguments right now on overturning the entire law as well as just the individual mandate.
First words leaking from the court room after day two is that Judge Kennedy appeared to be leaning toward overturning the mandate based on his questions. - Day Two ObamaCare Hearing Summary to come… Please check back later.
Bet you won’t see this little tantrum on mainstream news!?!
I have not been able to verify 100% that this is real, but on the site where the video originated there were also the videos of him locking himself out of the white house as well as the one of the guy walking behind him during a speech and of Michelle with her Hula Hoop: all real; plus there are some composites that people put together like one of him licking ice cream that was obviously photo-shopped. I couldn’t find anything saying it wasn’t real and it looked pretty authentic?!? Who knows for sure, so you be the judge… M~
MUST be worth an indictment, Right? Somebody going to jail? Or at least being arrested and tried for crimes against Humanity? Or at least the deaths of these People?
Somebody needs to be held accountable…Rick Perry might know who those somebodies are. (And, is it a coincidence that Rick Perry signed the Executive Order for mandatory Gardasil shots for all little girls in his state the same year he got the nod from the Global Elite… the Bilderbergers?)
“So, now we have to logically ask “what does tracking micro-chipped children have to do with fighting terrorism and finding Osama bin Laden?
“Is our government hiding behind the War on Terror to usher in the Big Brother society as George Orwell predicted in his book 1984?”
“Why leave the U.S borders wide open if our government is so concerned about terrorism?”
Let’s make a careful examination of recent history for a moment. Below are excerpts from national publications detailing how the microchip technology has been slowly making its way into society as well as its acceptance with government officials and school districts nationwide.
PS. Why is it that these people ALWAYS get a pass and nobody ever goes to Prison for these murders? They pay off the families with blood money and gag them up after the settlement and life goes on…
Intel Hub Note: The FDA is a criminal organization, some say terrorist organization, that openly promotes and approves vaccines that kill people while at the same time attacking herbal remedies for cancer and raiding raw milk dairy’s.
To those in the corporate controlled media including Peter Gergen (Bohemian Grove is great) who recently said that those that rallied against the Gardasil vaccine killed people, we know who you are and you will be held accountable in a court of law for your promotion of the murder of dozens of women. You have proved yourself to be nothing less than pure scum.
The idea that anyone could watch these videos and look at the evidence and still promote this horrible vaccine just goes to show how bad the people that control this country actually are.
Anderson Cooper(who is actually an elitist Vanderbilt) and his panel of Big Pharma shills continue to push this vaccine even after all these deaths.
About That Gardasil Mandate “Opt-Out” Perry Is Touting - Rick Santorum said at the CNN/Tea Party Sponsored debate, “If anything, this should have been an Opt-In not an Opt-Out! This is another over-reach of government. We give vaccines at schools only for illnesses that can easily be passed from student to student during the normal school day process.”
The liberal media and their minions are having a field day with GOP Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann because she stood up to Rick Perry at the CNN/tea party sponsored debate. Michele Bachmann repeated a story told to her by a mother in the audience before the debate about her daughter having developed some type of mental retardation after having the Merck HPV vaccination. In a synchronized attack the left has circled to make Bachmann look like a fanatic to get her out of the race. Rick Santorum also stood up during that debate saying that using an Executive Order to require all 11 and 12 year old girls in Texas to be immunized for something that might never affect them and has now been proved to be as harmful as the possible Cancer it guards against is shameful and wrong. I would say take a good look at the information above and ask yourself just who might be wrong and the bad guy here.
According to Dr. Mercola, "There have been a total of 47 deaths linked to Gardasil since it was brought to market in 2006, according to a press release issued by Judicial Watch, which says it has obtained records from the FDA. In 2008 alone 28 women and girls died after receiving Gardasil injections (up from 19 deaths in 2007). In all the FDA documented 6,723 adverse events related to Gardasil in 2008, of which 1,061 were considered "serious," and 142 considered "life threatening,” the group reported. Further, as Barbara Loe Fisher reported, by the summer of 2009 Gardasil had already caused more than 15,000 reports of vaccine reactions, including more than 3,000 injuries and 48 deaths.
However, it’s estimated that only between 1 percent and 10 percent of vaccine adverse events are ever reported, which means there could actually be anywhere from 150,000 to 1.5 million vaccine injuries related to Gardasil." (See here). The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) has said that, "With cervical cancer causing about one percent of all cancer deaths in American women due to routine pap screening, it was inappropriate for the FDA to fast track Gardasil. It is way too early to direct all young girls to get three doses of a vaccine that has not been proven safe or effective in their age group."
Reliable sources have reported that Governor Rick Perry has received $21,000 from Merck's political action committee, he said $5,000). See here. And who knows what he received under the table, or what he received in kind or other favors, or what his aid received.
Even Jay Leno jumped into the Bachmann Brawl. In an interview last week with Bachmann he questioned her on her stand, using a demeaning tone and making the statement that tens of thousands of girls have received this vaccine and it is perfectly safe; there have been no incidents. Really? Tell that to the people in the videos above (and there are many more stories both on the Internet and not publically reported!).
Michele Bachmann is guilty of repeating a story told her by a parent before checking the stats. As far as I could find there is no information about Gardasil or the like causing retardation, but doesn’t mean it isn’t true either. Bachmann went with her heart and spoke as a mother. Her point was that no state has the right to force children to have these types of vaccines and that many parents just don’t know enough about a vaccine to opt out until it is too late. At worst, as former Senator and fellow GOP candidate Rick Santorum said in the debate, parents should have to opt-in if they want their child to receive a shot like this and don’t have the money to go to a private practitioner… not opt-out.
Governor Perry said he was sorry for the way he passed this edict… by executive order, but not for the offense itself nor for the effect it has had on young girls and their families. Governor Perry has been in trouble for crony capitalism before… and this deal with Merck sounds pretty murky to me!
Huntsman Video: Would you vote for this man? Slick campaign commercial for Jon Huntsman depicts reasons NOT to vote for him! - http://youtu.be/IV8HFHkX3PA
Palin Video: Sarah Palin's video at Iowa State Fair. She looks to be running for president! - http://youtu.be/gqaE4sXZWRQ - Also check out the movie made about her (but not by her) Undefeated
BTW… Congrats to Thad McCotter! Tied with Perry for 3rd in the NHYR Straw Poll. More proof that Thad's message has traction with us young folk.
Newt Gingrich calls for a complete audit of the Federal Reserve
And Happy Birthday Ron Paul. Ron turned a young 76 on 8.19.11.
Perry, Bachmann, Romney Separate Themselves From 2012 GOP Pack… Prediction: Palin Will Announce in September and That Will Be Your Serious Field for the Nomination (unless Christie gets and then the will be 5): Palin, Perry, Bachmann and Romney – Paul, Cain, McCotter and Santorum will keep it interesting and have some good ideas and input but I think they are either too weak or too much on the fringe to get the nomination. Huntsman and Gingrich are already out… they just won’t admit it to themselves!
The GOP’s biggest challenge is not to chew each other up beyond repair. Because in the end, no matter who gets the GOP nomination, the goal has to be to vote and defeat Barrack Obama!!
Dramatic scene from the Movie "Rollover" (1981). A frightening worldwide currency crisis we should be prepared for in our lifetimes. The Dollar has lost 95% of it's value since the inception of The Federal Reserve system in 1913.
Language Alert: This really is a must watch unless you are squeamish about bad language!!
Felonious Munk speaks on the economic state of America and why we shouldn't pay our bills.
When Glenn Beck heard the following rant by comedian Felonious Munk, he couldn’t believe it. You probably won’t either.
Munk is known for recording wild, profanity-laced YouTube rants as part of a series he calls “Stop It B!” Sometimes it’s hard to tell what he really believes and what is part of his routine. But we’ll let you make up your mind regarding his latest rant — a stern message to Obama about the debt ceiling and America paying its bills.
There’s no way to really sum it up, except for that it has a lot of GRAPHIC LANGUAGE and you’ll need headphones to watch if you are in public, at work or near kids. You also might need to cover your mouth from laughing — or gasping…
Someone sent me this the other day and kept meaning to post it and send it out to my list. I did send it to Beck, Rush, Greta and O’Reilly though. (…not that I’m taking credit for Beck getting it on the Blaze) I laughed, gasped, and cheered!! It is about time I thought!! It is a sad day when a foul mouthed comedian has more sense than the President and those who surround him in the White House (and I don’t want to hear about the Congress because as Democratic President Harry Truman said… the buck stops with the President!), and it is just as sad when a comedian has more guts than most Americans to speak up!!
Ask Marion~
Update:
FELONIOUS MUNK TALKS COMEDY, OBAMA, & WHY HE WOULD JOIN GBTV WITH THE BLAZE
A phone interview with Felonious Munk isn‘t what you’d expect from an energetic, foul-mouthed comedian. He swore once. Ranted just little. And explained how he used to be a finance director making six figures. It’s a job he gave up to do comedy (much to the chagrin of his mother). And now, it‘s a job that’s led him to grab the attention of Glenn Beck.
“I definitely appreciate that kind of exposure,” he said of his recent rant against Obama becoming a favorite on Beck’s radio show. Still, he included a caveat: “You got to keep in mind, it puts me in a unique position as a black guy who has questioned Obama.”
In the three-minute video posted on his YouTube channel recently, Munk berated the government and president Obama for not paying the country’s bills and racking up debt. All with a unique, profanity-laced flavor that left many laughing and gasping at the same time.
For the most part, the reaction to those words from the black community “hasn’t been that bad.” But there are detractors who don’t like him speaking out against a black president. Munk had a message for them:
“It’s disingenuous to complain about a black man saying something about Obama, when, during President Bush’s reign [he made sure to point out he meant to say "reign"] if you spoke out against the government at that time it was kind of this, ‘oh, you‘re not patriotic’ thing. And black people thought that was ridiculous. Well, if that was ridiculous then, it‘s just as ridiculous for you to say that I can’t speak out against Obama.”
So where does the long-bearded comedian, not afraid to criticize Obama, stand politically?
“I hate partisan anything” he told The Blaze from Virginia Beach, VA. “I rant just as much about Republicans as I do Democrats. I rant just as much about the Tea Party as I do liberals.” In fact, he thinks the idea of loyalty to a party is “retarded.”
In fact, he said he supports the president — whether George W. Bush or Barack Obama. But he always retains “the constitutional right to say, ‘that’s ridiculous.’”
Still can’t pin him down? You probably won’t be able to put him in a simple partisan box. Consider this: he’s not a fan of the health care bill (he calls it the “ugliest quilted blanket of health care crap I’ve ever seen”), but has a soft spot for Canada’s single-payer health system.
That seems to lean liberal.
“I think our government has made everything they possible could more difficult, and that‘s just during Obama’s presidency,” he said, later adding, “I think [the health care bill] was one of those things where you made a promise and now you force yourself to keep that promise even though what you eventually came up with was crap.” In other words, “squash it.”
That seems to lean conservative.
He doesn’t think the country is headed for communism like some conservatives, but he believes some of the “socialist” programs put in place during the Great Depression weren’t meant to go on indefinitely, and now some people have become dependent on them.
Liberal and conservative?
The rant he delivered that caught Beck’s eye, he explained, was just one of many issues he has with the president.
“There are, oh my God, a million things.” For example, he’s opposed to foreign aid to Somalia and Israel alike.
Still, he admits some of the things he ranted about in the video were slightly exaggerated for comedic effect.
What is he, then? How about a comedic conundrum.
Who is Felonious Munk?
Felonious Munk isn’t really Felonious Munk. His real name is Dennis Banks. And he said this is the first time he’s admitted that to the media.
He has a surprisingly deep knowledge of history — he spouted off people (both politicians and comedians) and terms from days past like he was, well, a stand-up version of Beck. And his path to comedy wasn’t an ordinary one. He went to college for accounting but then switched to IT after being bored with the former. He then worked in finance for almost 12 years, specifically in the car sales business.
Then, he said, the economy “forced” him into comedy — which is a way of saying business wasn’t good so he chose to do what he loved.
Still, his brand of comedy is different. There are curse words. It can be crass. There are plenty of laughs. But he also wants his craft to make people think.
“I thought comedy was always, ‘make me laugh, but let me go home and think about it,’” he explained, which he says is the offspring of his humor and his different way of thinking about things. Now he’s traveling across the country sharing it with as many people as possible.
And now, because of Beck, he’s tapping an audience that might not have ever known about him. And he’s okay with that. He’s even going to work it into his routine.
“I’m sure Glenn Beck is going to be a part of a few of my shows coming up. As a matter of fact, he’ll probably get a tribute video,” he said chuckling. Which is ironic, he added, because he’s made videos bashing Fox News in the past.
Almost twenty minutes into the interview, he finally started cracking jokes: “I think it’s kind of cool that Glenn Beck sees this video and goes, ‘Wow, this guy who kind of looks like bin Laden makes a point that I agree with.’” He‘s even thinking about donning a turban and Photo-shopping himself shaking Beck’s hand.
And what about Beck’s own joke at the end of his radio show Thursday, wondering if Munk (or Banks) would be willing to join GBTV as a comedian?
“Truthfully, the only way you could get me to shave my beard is if I had that opportunity,” he said while laughing. “If Glenn Beck wanted to make me the Lewis Black of his new TV show, tell him I’m all over it, I’ve got material for months, and I’ve got a couple of really nice suits.”
“We could be like the Run DMC of the new politics.”
In this special video presentation for Prison Planet.tv members filmed from the new Infowars television studio, Alex Jones hosts a round table discussion featuring Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, founder and executive director of the Tenth Amendment Center Michael Boldin, as well as activist and economic writer Brandon Smith of Alt-Market, to discuss the states' rights movement and how Americans need to organize now to take back power usurped in a myriad of different ways by the federal government.
Rhodes explains how history tells us that tyranny can never be enforced without the aid of uniformed military and police, highlighting the case of East Germany where troops were told to stand down and two days later the Berlin wall fell. Rhodes documents how the implementation of a totalitarian infrastructure in the United States has led to the President having supreme power to assassinate US citizens by declaring them "enemy combatants" and how this sets an ominous benchmark for the level of power that has been accumulated by the executive branch of government. The federal government, the Southern Policy Law Center and the ADL have all targeted Oath Keepers simply because the group attempts to re-affirm commitment to the bill of rights amongst active duty soldiers and law enforcement.
Michael Boldin invokes the words of the founding fathers who warned that federal power would always grow like a cancer unless the American people used the tool of nullification to strike at the root of such tyranny. Nullification is about rendering a particular law null and void, unenforceable within a state, explains Boldin, and it is the duty of American citizens to oversee this process to stymie federal power instantaneously, not wait until after an election or a legal battle. Boldin has led the effort to promote this ideal with the recent Nullify Now tour.
Brandon Smith joins to discuss the recent federal persecution and raid of the makers of the Liberty Dollar, who were labeled as domestic terrorists because they merely challenged the legitimacy of the federal reserve by encouraging Americans to use sound money. Smith talks about the necessity for communities to set up alternative forms of trade and barter in order to drastically reduce their exposure to dollar devaluation that otherwise threatens to completely eviscerate their economic livelihoods.
Press For Truth Presents Into The Fire World leaders and activists from around the world gathered for the G20 Summit. With over 19,000 police officers and security personnel on hand, the results lead to over 1100 arrests, martial law in downtown Toronto, and the most massive violation of civil liberties in Canadian history.
80,000 Soldiers On AMERICAN SOIL.......Being Trained And Stationed At Fort Stewart, Georgia
Many scientists believe that the big Solar Storm is about to erupt, sending EMPs at earth (something that the government has tried to keep under wraps). If the electrical grid and communications, computers, etc are disrupted, chaos would supervene. This could also be the beginning of the "tribulation." The cities would be without light, heat, sanitation, food and other necessities in less than a week.
There would be mass evacuations and the gangs would try to take over. It would be a probable time for attacks from the enemies of America and the onset of world wide panic, famine, plagues. I would strongly suggest getting out of the cities now and heading for safer areas.
Dr. Byron Weeks, , COL. USAF, Ret.
I thought the following news article would interest you, by Jan Lamprecht
A MUST READ: 80,000 Soldiers On AMERICAN SOIL.......Being Trained And Stationed At Fort Stewart, Georgia....Military Police State Coming?
Date Posted: Wednesday 14-Apr-2010
This does not sound pretty at all for us. IMO, this is a tactic to set Martial Law in place, they are just pushing for it. (The existence of these troops and their training have been verified)
Remember there will be plants in the crowds slowing moving towards the front to provoke 'civil unrest'. They are paid to do this, they will do anything to push it to a blood bath for Americans. If anyone living in the Fort Stewart, Georgia area could please contact us with any information regarding the activities occurring at this time...
Seawitch
Military Police State Coming? Police State; noun, also known as Military Police State
(1) A state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and! political life of the people.
(2) A nation whose rulers maintain order and obedience by the threat of police or military force; one with a brutal, arbitrary government.
I don't care which side of the political aisle you are on.
You could be a die-hard Obama supporter, or you can hate everything he and his policies stand for, or think they stand for.
But according to the Army Times Magazine, Prez Obama has done another first, never before in the history of this Nation; and I personally cannot help but wonder exactly WHY?
Prez Obama has ordered the full time and permanent Military Response to ANY upcoming social CIVILIAN chaos event here in the United States.
So what exactly does Prez Obama know, or suspect, that the rest of us do not know, yet some people do suspect?
And exactly what kind of "Military Response" to a civilian threat is Obama preparing?
Well apparently the mere threat of civilian chaos is so large ! that a domestic law-enforcement arm of the U.S. military (refe! rred to by The Army Times as the "Consequence Management Response Force") has been created to deal with what U.S. officials believe to be a coming, unprecedented wave of massive civilian social chaos.
A recent report by the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute states flatly the U.S. military must prepare for "a violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States" that could be provoked by "unforeseen economic collapse" or "loss of functioning political and legal order."
The Army Times has reported that the domestic emergency army unit has been increased 80,000 COMBAT trained troops.
Many of these are combat veterans returning from Iraq and who are currently, and will be in the future, being trained and stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia.
The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.
Now ! they’re preparing for the same mission here at home.
WHY?
It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home.
In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas to HELP care for civilians.
But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has ever been given a permanent dedicated assignment within the United States.
WHY??? WHY NOW???
NorthCom, the joint command that was established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts in case of TERRORIST ATTACKS, is now being prepared to be used in support of CIVILIAN AUTHORITIES in case the civilian population gets 'out of hand'.
The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced "se! a-smurf").
The Army states that the Combat Troops used ! to ‘maintain civilian order here in the United States’ will use some of the tactics and skills they acquired in the Iraq War Zone, but apparently do not feel they will have to deal with being shot at by American Civilians while using those tactics and skills.
Training for homeland 'scenarios' has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as extra medical training for a CBRNE incident.
"It’s a new modular package of capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission (war on American Civilians??) we’re undertaking we were the first to get it." Said one Unit Commander.
The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; etc.
And some of the brigade elements will also be on call around the clock, during which! time they’ll do their regular marksmanship, gunnery and other deployment training.
Now American Civilians need to be prepared to deal with Combat Troops that are training to use this war-zone tactics on American Soil, on American Civilians.
Now I don't know about anyone else, but I can read pretty damn well.
I see SEVERAL issues with all of this, and they all concern me greatly.
Why would Obama need an 80,000 COMBAT force of armed soldiers, to support 'civilian authority' (his authority?) here in CONUS, ie: the Continental United States?
What makes Obama so concerned about any 'uprising or chaos' from the American Civilian Population? What does he know that no one else knows, or accepts?
WHY would the civilian population get 'out of hand' or create 'violent chaos' that would require the intervention of 80,000 armed military combat soldiers?
Why is it these Combat Troops have NO FEAR of being shot at by the American Civilian Population they are attempting to 'control'?
Does Obama use these guys to take our firearms first?
Look, I could care less if you are a Koolaid drinking Obama worshiper or not.
THIS PERMANENT Military Combat Brigade of 80,000 soldiers on AMERICAN SOIL for the express purpose of 'controlling the American Civilian Population' if and when needed, is one hell of a scary thought.
This is the FIRST time in American history any President, or anyone else for that matter, has set up a full time, permanent Military Unit for this purpose, on American Soil.
In any other country, like Russia, China, Cuba, it would be called a Military Police State when you use the military to control the civilian population.
I wonder what this freaking Messiah plans on calling it;
"Hope Ya Liked Your Liberty, Cause It's Gone Now, For your Own Good Of Course."
America's Police Brutality Pandemic - Archive from 2007
by Paul Craig Roberts Bush's "war on terror" quickly became Bush's war on Iraqi civilians. So far over one million Iraqi civilians have lost their lives because of Bush's invasion, and four million have been displaced. Iraq's infrastructure is in ruins. Disease is rampart. Normal life has disappeared.
Self-righteous Americans justify these monstrous crimes as necessary to ensure their own safety from terrorist attack. Yet, Americans are in far greater danger from their own police forces than they are from foreign terrorists. Ironically, Bush's "war on terror" has made Americans less safe at home by diminishing US civil liberty and turning an epidemic of US police brutality into a pandemic.
The only terrorist most Americans will ever encounter is a policeman with a badge, nightstick, mace and Taser. A Google search for "police brutality videos" turns up 2,210,000 entries. Some entries are foreign and some are probably duplications, but the number is so large that a person could do nothing but watch police brutality videos for the rest of his life. A search on "You Tube" alone turned up 2,280 police brutality videos. PrisonPlanet has a selection of the most outrageous recent cases.
Police brutality has crossed the line from using excessive force against a resisting Rodney King to unprovoked gratuitous violence against persons offering no resistance, such as the elderly, women, students, and elected officials. Americans are not safe anywhere from police.Police attack Americans in university libraries, in public meetings, and in their own homes.
A UCLA student was Tasered by police without cause for studying in the university library without having his student ID on his person. Following police orders to leave, the student was walking toward the door when police grabbed him and repeatedly Tasered him.
On September 19, 2007 a young woman was repeatedly Tasered without cause by a large brutal cop in a parking lot outside a night club in Warren Ohio.
On September 14, 2007, Roseland, Indiana, city council member David Snyder was ejected from a council meeting by dictatorial council chairman Charlie Shields. Snyder had protested being limited to one minute to speak. Police goon Jack Tiller escorted Snyder out, and as Snyder exited the building, Tiller, following behind, pushed Snyder to the ground and without cause began beating Snyder in the head with a nightstick. Snyder was hospitalized.
Local TV news stations throughout the US offer an endless stream of police brutality videos, which are then posted on the stations' web sites, often with an opportunity for citizens to express their opinion of the incidents.
There are many disturbing aspects to police brutality cases.
One disturbing aspect is that the police always arrest the people that they have gratuitously brutalized. There was no justification whatsoever to arrest councilman Snyder, or the UCLA student, or the University of Florida student. The cops committed assault against innocent citizens. The cops should have been arrested for their criminal acts. Instead, the cops cover up their own crimes by arresting their victims on false charges that are invented to justify the unprovoked police violence against citizens.
Another disturbing aspect is that no one tells the police to stop the brutality. "Free" Americans are so intimidated by police that on February 19 of this year male customers in a Chicago bar stood aside while a drunk cop weighing 251 pounds beat a 115 pound barmaid, knocking her to the floor with his fists and repeatedly kicking her, for obeying the bar rules and not serving him more drinks.
Yet another disturbing aspect is that a minority of citizens will justify each act of police brutality no matter how brutal and how unprovoked. For example, WNDU.com's poll of its viewers found that 64.2% agreed that Snyder was a victim of police brutality, but 27.8% thought that Snyder got what was coming to him. "Law and order conservatives" and other authoritarian personalities invariably defend acts of police brutality. Perhaps the police brutality pandemic will bring the day when we will be able to say that a civil libertarian is a law and order conservative who has been brutalized by police.
The most disturbing aspect is that the police usually get away with it.
I remember decades ago when civil libertarians in New York City tried to stop police brutality by establishing civilian review boards to introduce some accountability into the police's interaction with civilians. Law and order conservatives at William F. Buckley's National Review went berserk. Accountability was "second-guessing" the police. The result would be a crime wave. And so on.
Police forces have always attracted bullies with authoritative personalities who desire to beat senseless anyone who does not quake in their presence. In the past police could get away with brutalizing blacks but not whites. Today white citizens are as likely as racial minorities to be victims of police brutality.
The police are supreme. The militarization of the police, armed now with military weapons and trained to view the general public as the enemy, against whom "pain compliance" must be used, has placed every American at risk of personal injury and false arrest from our "public protectors."
In "free and democratic America," citizens are in such great danger from police that there are websites devoted to police brutality with online forms to report the brutality.
Nine years ago Human Rights Watch published a report entitled, "Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States." The report stated:
"Police abuse remains one of the most serious and divisive human rights violations in the United States. The excessive use of force by police officers, including unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and rough treatment, persists because overwhelming barriers to accountability make it possible for officers who commit human rights violations to escape due punishment and often to repeat their offenses. Police or public officials greet each new report of brutality with denials or explain that the act was an aberration, while the administrative and criminal systems that should deter these abuses by holding officers accountable instead virtually guarantee them impunity.
"This report examines common obstacles to accountability for police abuse in fourteen large cities representing most regions of the nation. The cities examined are: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Providence, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Research for this report was conducted over two and a half years, from late 1995 through early 1998.
"The brutality cases examined, which are set out in detail in chapters on each city, are similar to cases that continue to emerge in headlines and in survivors' complaints. It is important to note, however, that because it is difficult to obtain case information except where there is public scandal and/or prosecution, this report relies heavily on cases that have reached public attention; disciplinary action and criminal prosecution are even less common than the cases set out below would suggest.
There is no way to hold police accountable when the president and vice president of the United States, the attorney general, and the Republican Party maintain that the civil liberties and the separation of powers mandated by the US Constitution must be abandoned in order that the executive branch can keep Americans safe from terrorists.
Who is a terrorist? If the police and the US government have the mentality of airport security, they cannot tell a terrorist from an 86-year old Marine general on his way to give a speech at West Point. Retired Marine Corps General Joseph J. Foss was delayed and nearly had his Medal of Honor confiscated. Airport security regarded the pin on the metal as a weapon that the 86-year old Marine general and former governor of South Dakota could use to hijack an airliner and commit a terrorist deed.
In America today, every citizen is a potential terrorist in the eyes of the authorities. Airport security makes this clear every minute of every day, as do the FBI and NSA with warrantless spying on our emails, postal mail, telephone calls, and every possible invasion of our privacy. We are all recipients of abuse of our constitutional rights whether or not we suffer beatings, Taserings, and false arrests.
The law makes it impossible for Americans to defend themselves from police brutality. Law and order conservatives have made it a felony with a long prison sentence to "assault a police officer." Assaulting a police officer means that if a police thug intends to beat your brains out with his nightstick and you disarm your assailant, you have "assaulted a police officer." If you are not shot on the spot by his backup, you will be convicted by a "law and order" jury and sent to prison.
No matter how gratuitous and violent the police brutality, a "free" American citizen can defend himself only at the expense, if not of his life, of a long stay in prison. Osama bin Laden must wish that he had such power over Americans.
September 26, 2007
Paul Craig Roberts [send him mail] wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is author or coauthor of eight books, including Supply-Side Revolution(Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous scholarly journals and testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He is also coauthor with Karen Araujo of Chile: Dos Visiones — La Era Allende-Pinochet (Santiago: Universidad Andres Bello, 2000).
"Howard Roark laughed." So begins Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, the improbable bestseller that established Rand's fame and reputation as a novelist-philosopher.
Rejected by twelve publishers, The Fountainhead was finally accepted by Bobbs-Merrill when a young editor taken with the book threatened to quit if it were not. "If this is not the book for you," he wired the publisher's head office, "then I am not the editor for you." His confidence was justified: to date, The Fountainhead has sold some six million copies all told, and continues to sell over 100,000 copies each year. At the time of its publication, Lorine Pruette wrote in the New York Times that "it was the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can recall," with characters who are "amazingly literate, romanticized as larger-than-life representatives of good and evil." However, it was not critical adulation, but the incredible word of mouth that spread about the book that made it a bestseller.
From its memorable opening line, Rand's prose camera pans out to reveal Howard Roark, a young student of architecture, poised nude on a cliff's edge and preparing to dive into the lake below. The scene sets the tone for the book, and hints at the "sense of life" that animated Rand's fiction: Roark has just been expelled from architecture school for refusing to ape the styles of past masters in his designs. His response is not despair, but an indifference grounded in a supreme confidence in his own artistic vision. Explaining that vision to the school's dean several scenes later, Roark says:
Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the materials determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets ever detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it.
Like Pruette, Rand saw her characters as ideal types, embodied principles. She always denied that her protagonists were modeled on any actual people, and in particular was adamant that Roark was not a fictionalized Frank Lloyd Wright. Still, it is hard not to hear in Roark's own theories of architecture echoes of Wright, especially his 1930–31 lectures at Princeton, which Rand had read. Wright had said of his own buildings: "Consistency from first to last will give you the result you seek and consistency alone." Even their biographies overlap: Roark's mentor Henry Cameron, a brilliant innovator whose star had faded, evokes Wright's own, Louis Sullivan.
Rand sought unsuccessfully to interview Wright as a source for The Fountainhead. (Instead, she gathered source material for the book by working without pay as a typist for New York architect Ely Jacques Kahn.) In her letter to Wright, Rand described her project as a "story of human integrity. That is what I am writing. That is what you have lived. And to my knowledge you are the only one among the men of this century who has lived it." She wanted to interview Wright, not for information, but for "the inspiration of seeing before me a living miracle." The two later became acquainted, and Wright even began designing a house for Rand, though it was never built.
The reference to "integrity" must be taken to refer not only to the internal coherence of Wright's architectural philosophy, but also his famous stubbornness with clients when it came to seeing his plans realized as he had intended. Roark's fidelity to his own vision makes it difficult for him to find work, despite his genius, and the conflicts this creates drive the book's plot.
Roark's own approach is thrown into relief by a parallel portrayal of the career of his classmate Peter Keating. A thorough mediocrity, Keating's sense of self is as derivative as his building designs. While Roark toils in obscurity, Keating rises through the ranks of the prestigious New York firm Francon & Heyer. But on major commissions, Keating's lack of inspiration forces him to seek help from Roark, who is the unacknowledged designer of Keating's most renowned buildings.
The contrast between the two is meant to illustrate what Rand would later call "the virtue of selfishness." A conventional story would have set up Roark's "selfless devotion to his art" against Keating's "grasping, selfish careerism." Rand reverses this expectation. Keating's pathology, Rand shows, is precisely the result of selflessness. Lacking a strong identity of his own, he seeks to construct one second-hand by absorbing the opinions of others. Lacking self-respect, he struggles to do whatever will please others and win him their adulation. Roark's apparent "sacrifice," on the other hand, is nothing of the sort. If he insists on his own methods and designs, it is because they arehis own. The true sacrifice, Rand makes clear, would be to compromise his artistic integrity for mere popular approval, or even material comfort.
That integrity makes it impossible for Roark to fit in with conventional architecture firms, and equally difficult to secure commissions when he opens his own office. Eventually, he leaves the city to work as a manual laborer at a granite quarry owned by Guy Francon of Francon & Heyer—which by now has become Francon & Keating. There, he meets Francon's fiercely independent daughter Dominique. Recognizing Roark as a kindred spirit, she begins to pursue him, and in what has become the book's most famous scene, they make violent, passionate love that, while consensual, seems on the surface like an act of rape. But Francon, unsure she is prepared for a serious romantic affair with Roark, pulls back. Soon, a businessman who admires the buildings Roark managed to have built finds him at the quarry and brings him back to New York to work on an apartment building. There, he finds growing success—and a new enemy.
While Keating is Roark's professional rival, he is not quite Roark's adversary: by turns contemptible and pathetic, Peter Keating is not up to the role of archenemy. That is left to journalist and architecture critic Ellsworth Toohey. Toohey is something of an aberration in Rand's fiction, in that he is perhaps her only really memorable villain.
In Rand's Objectivist philosophy, intelligence, rationality, and achievement are all associated with her own ethics, and therefore with her protagonists. Typically, these are opposed by bland, bromide-mouthing mobs who evoke nothing so much as Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil." Toohey is the exception: he is the one character in Rand's work who fully comprehends the difference between good and evil, between individualism and collectivism, and consciously chooses evil. Incapable of Roark's form of creative achievement, which he despises, Toohey has made his own goal power over the opinions of others. A clue to his motive is provided by his childhood reaction to the famous Biblical query: "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Toohey asks in response: "Then in order to be truly wealthy, a man should collect souls?" His adult life has been devoted to precisely that end, through the formation of a series of organizations across many different fields, including a collective of fashionable second-rate writers who promote each other's work ceaselessly.
Determined to crush Roark, Toohey manipulates a spiritually inclined pawn, Hopton Stoddard, to commission an ecumenical temple from the atheistic architect. Stoddard, on Toohey's advice, convinces Roark to take the job by telling him: "But you're a profoundly religious man, Mr. Roark—in your own way. I can see that in your buildings." Toohey has detected, not religious reverence in the ordinary sense, but the reverence for the best in the human spirit that permeates Roark's designs. Once the temple—a masterpiece, of course—is complete, Toohey denounces it as blasphemous, and pushes Stoddard to sue Roark for breach of contract. Roark's defense is merely to offer the jury photographs of the temple—but swayed by the testimony of an architectural expert (Toohey, of course) they vote against him, destroying his reputation.
The verdict comes as a blow to Dominique Francon, who more than ever despairs that individual achievement and integrity have little chance of surviving in the world as it is. She resolves to purge herself of the capacity to appreciate heroic achievement—and to destroy Roark, who is a constant reminder of the individualism society cannot tolerate. Attempting to drown herself in inanity, she marries Peter Keating, only to leave him for newspaper tycoon Gail Wynand, publisher of the Banner, where Toohey's column appears. Like Roark in many ways, Wynand differs from the architect in having decided that the only way to survive and flourish is to pander to the public, which he does on a daily basis in his widely read newspaper. Wynand, though, cannot help but respond with admiration to Roark's work... and to Roark himself when they meet. Through Wynand's influence, Roark once again begins to work.
Keating's fortunes, in the meantime, have soured. Lacking his own creative voice, he is at a loss when the architectural trends he has spent his career emulating cease to be fashionable. Desperate to salvage his career, he begs Roark to design one last building for him: a low-income housing project to be called Cortland Homes. Roark, knowing that the project is under Toohey's control, and that a plan under his own name would never be accepted, agrees, on the condition that his plan be built precisely as designed.
When Toohey has some frivolous ornamentation added at the last moment, spoiling the integrity of the building, Roark dynamites it, with help from Dominique. Wynand believes he can use his media empire to sway public opinion in Roark's favor as the trial approaches, but he discovers that power over others is ephemeral. Once he is no longer telling the people what they want to hear, his papers stop selling. In a bid to take over the Banner, Toohey engineers a strike. Finally, Wynand caves and reverses his editorial position on Roark. At the trial, however, Roark offers an eloquent defense of his right to destroy his creation, whose integrity had already been destroyed in violation of his agreement with Keating. He tells the jury:
Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons—a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man—the function of his reasoning mind. But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act—the process of reason—must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.
Roark is acquitted. Wynand, realizing at last the necessity of integrity, shuts down the Banner rather than allow Toohey to control it in the wake of the strike. Roark is commissioned to rebuild the Cortland Homes by a private businessman, and Wynand decides the time has come to build his Wynand Building, which will be the city's tallest skyscraper. The book closes with Roark standing triumphant atop his work in progress, alongside an admiring Dominique.
The book's surprising success led to the production of a 1949 movie version of The Fountainhead starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, and directed by King Vidor. Warner Brothers had sought to have Wright himself design the film's sets, but that plan was scrapped when Wright demanded 10 percent of the film's gross profits on top of his $250,000 fee. The screenplay was, of course, penned by Ayn Rand. It is safe to assume that Warner Brothers didn't dare change the dialogue.
Are you ready to stand up and be counted? It's not who's going to let us open on the 15th... it's who's going to stop us.
Tonight, our friend, JOHN STOSSEL, is on Hannity at 9pm ET on Fox . . . and the topic . . . “New Movie Hated by Hollywood?!”
Are the liberal elite trying to stop you from seeing an American classic brought to life on the silver screen? John Stossel has “reel” insight on the new movie “Atlas Shrugged.”
September 26, 2007
