The Collectivist Mind Game: Demonizing the Non-Compliant (Part 1)

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In the libertarian sci-fi classic, “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,” Robert A. Heinlein describes a successful revolution of the individualistic, free-market-oriented residents of the Moon against the Earth’s tyrannical big government. The ins and outs of agitating and organizing the masses to fight the oppressive Authority feel just as realistic as the finer points of everyday life in the underground Lunar cities of the future.

The proposed revolutionary scenario could even serve as a workable model for similar real-life endeavors, if only the renowned futurist author hadn’t neglected to factor in the immanent function of any oppressive regime: systemic brainwashing of its subjects through the media, education, and entertainment channels.

If the tyrants on Earth were worth their salt, all the freedom-loving colonists would be subjected to an intense, manipulative indoctrination, which would shape their self-image as small and sinful “little guys” vis-à-vis the powerful, virtuous government that serves the powerless and protects them against all enemies, including themselves.

Thus, the government’s propagandistic narrative would establish the illusion of a society divided into three major classes: the ruling government class, endowed with benevolent powers to guide or punish; the majority class of hapless losers, whose survival depended on the government’s largesse and protection; and an unquantifiable class of demonized mysterious enemies of the government and, by extension, of the people, who would be the perceived culprits of all failures, hardships, and misery of the little guys’ everyday existence.

The majority class would itself be divided into an assortment of narrow-interest groups, held together only by the glue of government’s redistributive, pacifying and equalizing powers, as well as by their shared hostility towards the designated “enemies.”

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Flashback: Palin Predicts Obama Admin. Using Health Care to Curb Second Amendment Rights (+video)

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On August 1, 2009–just seven months into President Barack Obama’s first term–former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin predicted Obama would attempt to leverage health care to “take away” the Second Amendment rights of Americans.

In a speech to National Rifle Association members in Anchorage, Alaska, Palin said Americans should be “wary” of this “tie-in” because Obama would attempt to “take away our rights under the guise of some new health care plan”:

“And by the way, [with] health care being so big in D.C. right now, be wary when some kind of tie-in occurs. Because it will crop up: a tie-in with guns in an attempt to take away our rights under the guise of some new health care plan. You know that this is coming–that the two issues will somehow crop up and they’ll be tied together. So we have to be very wary of that.”

On Wednesday–more than three years after Palin’s warning–Obama did exactly what the former governor forecasted.

During a press conference wherein he issued 23 executive actions regarding guns and unveiled his gun control proposals, including a ban on so-called assault weapons, Obama said “doctors and other health care providers also need to be able to ask about firearms in their patients’ homes and safe storage of those firearms, especially if their patients show signs of certain mental illnesses or if they have a young child or mentally ill family member at home.”

See video below:

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Video: Islamists Protest French Military Intervention in Mali, Call for Shariah, Jihad in Europe and World

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The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) posted unbelievable video Sunday of Islamists rallying in England a little over one week ago to protest the French intervention in Mali.

The chants of the Islamists, though, appear to target the West in its entirety. Far from objecting to French foreign policy, the speakers repeatedly threaten that an Islamic caliphate will begin in Africa and the Middle East, but will eventually spread to “the whole world.”

“We will not stop as Muslims until the whole world is governed by Islam,” one man says evenly and calmly.

The video begins with a bearded individual leading chants, saying things like “Shariah for Mali! Jihad for Mali!” and “Allah Akbar!”

Watch shocking video:

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Obama’s ATF Nominee on DOJ’s ‘Fast and Furious’ Design Team

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As part of President Barack Obama’s 23-point gun control plan, he nominated Minnesota U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones–who currently doubles right now as the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives–to be the ATF director.

Jones was personally a part of the high-ranking Department of Justice unit that first met on October 26, 2009, to create the new DOJ policy that was used to justify “gunwalking” in Operation Fast and Furious. In Fast and Furious, the ATF “walked” roughly 2,000 firearms into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. That means through straw purchasers the agency allowed sales to happen and didn’t stop the guns from being trafficked, even though they had the legal authority to do so and were fully capable of doing so.

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens–estimates put it around at least 300–were killed with these firearms.

Obama nominated Jones after he said in his gun control plan that the “ATF has not had a confirmed director for six years. There is no excuse for leaving the key agency enforcing gun laws in America without a leader. It is time for Congress to confirm an ATF director.”

According to a congressional report from House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley, Jones was one of several senior DOJ officials in the meeting. Before the meeting, then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden disseminated a strategy that became the new law enforcement platform on which gunwalking was based.

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Algeria Hostage Crisis Death Toll Hits 80, Could Rise Further

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Algerian troops found 25 bodies of hostages at a bomb-littered gas plant deep in the Sahara desert on Sunday, a day after ending a four-day siege, a security source said, raising the death toll of militants and their captives to at least 80.

Around 30 foreigners – including American, British, French, Japanese, Norwegian and Romanian citizens – are among those missing or confirmed dead after the siege, one of the worst international hostage crises in decades.

Algeria had given a preliminary death toll of 55 people killed – 23 hostages and 32 militants – on Saturday and said it would rise as more bodies were found.

The security source said that toll did not include the 25 bodies found on Sunday, which meant the total number of hostages killed – foreign and local – was at least 48. The search was not over, and more could yet be found, he said.

He also said six militants were captured alive, including two found hiding on Sunday. Troops were still searching for others. Earlier, the authorities had said all the fighters had been killed.

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Bill Ayers to Keynote Nat’l Association of Teacher Educators Annual Meeting

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By Rebel Pundit. Domestic terrorist Bill Ayers is set to be a keynote speaker at the annual meeting for the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) next month in Atlanta, GA.

ATE’s website for the meeting describes Ayers’ work on the topic of education. It fails to mention any of his prior radical activities, including his domestic terrorism activities, political actions from his days in the Weather Underground, or that he is a self-proclaimed “Communist–with a lower case c.”

By whitewashing the most prominent aspects of Ayers’s resume and passing off a domestic terrorist as an appropriate and benign speaker at their meeting, ATE is taking a radical political position. Read more from this story HERE.

You can read more about about the Association of Teacher Educators HERE. The announcement for Ayer’s keynote states that he is a

formerly Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), founder of both the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society, has written extensively about social justice, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise.

His articles have appeared in numerous scholarly and popular journals, and his books include Teaching Toward Freedom; A Kind and Just Parent; Fugitive Days; On the Side of the Child; Teaching the Personal and the Political; (with Ryan Alexander-Tanner) To Teach: The Journey, in Comics; (with Kevin Kumashiro, Erica Meiners, Therese Quinn, and David Stovall) Teaching Toward Democracy; (with Bernardine Dohrn) Race Course. Edited books include (with Janet Miller) A Light in Dark Times: Maxine Greene and the Unfinished Conversation; (with Therese Quinn and Jean Ann Hunt) Teaching for Social Justice; and (with Therese Quinn and David Stovall) the Handbook of Social Justice in Education.

A ‘Fast and Furious’ Foreign Policy

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photo credit: al jazeera english

Let’s get this straight: Guns are too dangerous to be left in the hands of ordinary Americans. But guns in the hands of unknown rebels, who may turn out to be violent extremists, are just fine.

At the same time the Obama administration is threatening to curtail access to firearms in order to prevent gun violence at home, the president is channeling Warren Zevon abroad: “Send lawyers, guns, and money.”

And send them to the most dangerous, unstable places in the world.

The United States armed the rebels who overthrew Qaddafi in Libya. The administration is at least contemplating arming anti-Assad rebels in Syria. And although France balked at the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we will be providing logistical support to our freedom-fries friends in Mali.

What could possibly go wrong?

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Premiums Set to Rise This Year in Run-Up to ObamaCare Tax on Insurance Industry

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photo credit: stockmonkeys.com

While the most sweeping provisions of the health care overhaul have not yet gone into effect, plenty of Americans will still be paying higher insurance premiums this year — as insurance companies try to preemptively cover the cost of a tax increase included in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

That tax doesn’t take effect until next year, when other major provisions like the so-called “individual mandate” and insurance subsidies also kick in. But that hasn’t stopped insurance companies from charging higher premiums this year to cover the hike, as well as the cost of ObamaCare benefits such as free birth control and preventive care.

Premiums for individuals and small businesses are projected to increase due to the tax by roughly 2 percent this year and by as much as 3.7 percent in 2023, according to a widely cited analysis by the insurance industry.

Officials will argue about who is to blame for the hike — insurance companies for sticking customers with the cost, or the government for imposing the industry tax hike in the first place. But the projected increases are the latest sign that Americans, in exchange for expanding and strengthening insurance coverage, will in many cases be paying more.

Already, a pair of taxes has hit higher-income households to cover the law. Those making more than $250,000 are seeing a .9 percentage point increase in their Medicare tax, and another 3.8 percentage point hike on investment income.

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Rand Paul: GOP Must ‘Evolve and Adapt’

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photo credit: gage skidmore

Sen. Rand Paul said on Sunday that he will make a decision on a 2016 presidential run within two years and plans to be a force in the refashioning the Republican Party regardless of whether he seeks the Oval Office.

“We will continue to pursue and, you know, try to make that decision over the next two years or so,” the Kentucky Republican told WABC Radio’s Aaron Klein when asked about a potential White House bid.

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In the meantime, Paul said, he will “try to be part of the national debate,” adding that he hopes to play a major role in directing the future of the Republican Party.

“Whether or not I am going to run for president, that decision will come probably in two years, and [we] will in the meantime try to be part of the national debate,” Paul said. “We think the Republican Party needs to evolve and adapt, or we are going to become a permanent minority party.”

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Obama Sworn In For Second Term During White House Ceremony

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President Obama was sworn in for his second term on Sunday, accompanied by his family in a short ceremony in the White House.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office to Obama in the Blue Room, as the swearing-in was watched by a press pool and broadcast by cable networks.

Obama followed presidential precedent in choosing Roberts as chief justice to administer the oath of office to him.

The 44th president used a bible from first lady Michelle Obama’s family to swear in for his second term. The first lady held the bible during the ceremony, as the Obamas’ daughters, Sasha and Malia, stood between her and Roberts.

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