In what will become a classic hockey game, Canada’s men’s Olympic team defeated the United States in overtime, 3-2, to capture the gold medal. Well done, Canada and the United States! You gave the world a great game.

A very interesting piece by Brit Adam Shaw over at Amercian Thinker.  He notes how many on the political Right in the United States are afraid to call Obama a socialist, when it is clear he is one, and Americans, Europeans, etc., should not be afraid to say the “S” word. The American people have figured it out, and it is passed time for political commentators to label a socialist a socialist.

There are as many exact definitions of socialism as there are socialists. Yet they do have
common characteristics. Love of big government, nationalization of industry, massive
taxation, wealth redistribution, etc. all point towards socialism. Someone like the president
would not even have to say he was a socialist in Western Europe; it would be assumed quite
normally, without any fuss or conspiracy.
I have a lot of respect for Bill O’Reilly, but to a Brit who has seen his fair share of socialists and
lives in a socialist country run by a self-described socialist party by a self-described socialist
prime minister who has taken over for another self-described socialist prime minister, it is
puzzling why self-described independents like Mr O’Reilly are doing backflips in an attempt
to avoid the obvious fact — President Obama is quite clearly a socialist.
All these verbal gymnastics that are used to avoid stating the obvious may be rather humorous for
someone watching from over the Atlantic, but for Americans, such delusion is a very serious matter. It is important, not just for the American right, but for the American people as a whole, to realise just
exactly who it is they have elected to office. With the approval numbers dropping almost daily for
the president, it appears that it is sinking in for the generally center-right American public.
However, when people on the right start being “concerned” about describing Obama as what he clearly
is, in part due to the hysteria that both sides of the political spectrum exhibit when the word “socialist”
is used, then it damages the effectiveness of opposition to him. Instead of being able to define what
Obama’s aims are in his presidency, those on the left and on the right keep pushing Obama into a slightly
left-of-center, non-ideological fog. Such a political move is deceitful, and it does not allow the American
public to get a clear perception of just what they have voted into the White House.
Those of us across the pond who analyze American politics know exactly who it is you have in the White
House. Obama is not some new post-political entity. Nor is he some form of Stalinist that will set up a
USSA. He is a normal, well-spoken, charismatic socialist who in Britain would sit quite happily towards
the left of the Labour Party alongside figures such as Tony Benn, Aneurin Bevan, Harold Wilson, and Ed
Balls. To call someone a socialist is not conspiratorial, and it is not fear-mongering; it is simply the truth, and
it is time for some in the conservative media to take a deep breath and admit it — America has a socialist
leading the country. Welcome to the club: It stinks!

Free speech advocate Geert Wilders is on trial in the Netherlands for warning about the dangers of (once) creeping, now galloping, Islamization of that country and, indeed, most of the West.  He deserves your support.  Here is Pat Condell’s take:

Janet Daley in today’s Telegraph has an excellent review (”Immigration: A Plan to Alter the Nation’s Soul”) of New Labour’s aim to transform Britain when elected in 1997.  It’s past time to kick out Labour.  We hope the citizens of the UK do the right thing this year and through out Labour.

Her key insight is how the Marxists in Labour moved away from economic change to permanent social change through immigration as the principal mechanism of revolutionary change.  Her excellent analysis leaves out a couple of key points.  First, Labour also wanted voters.  Second, they needed a perpetual welfare class and state dependency.  The opinion article deserves to be read by all, especially Americans, where the Democrats are doing the same thing.

So now we know what Labour’s immigration policy was really about. The “open door” was not simply held ajar in order to admit a fresh workforce that would help to fill gaps in the growing economy. Nor was it just a gesture of hospitality and goodwill to those who were fleeing from repressive or inhospitable regimes in order to seek a better life. Both of those aims would have been credible – if controversial and not thought-through in all their consequences. And so would the longer-term view that dynamic, cosmopolitan societies are generally healthier and more productive than in-bred, isolated ones, or that immigrants who tend to be ambitious for themselves and their families could help to counter the passivity and defeatism that tend to be endemic in the British class system.
But as it turns out, the policy was motivated by something far more radical and fundamental than any of this. The full text of the draft policy paper composed in 2000 by a Home Office research unit – the gist of which had already been made public by a former Labour adviser – was released last week under Freedom of Information rules. Properly understood, it is political dynamite. What it states quite unequivocally was that mass immigration was being encouraged at least as much for “social objectives” as for economic ones. Migration was intended specifically to alter the demographic and cultural pattern of the country: to produce by force majeure the changes in attitude that the Labour government saw itself as representing.

Tony Blair’s “forces of conservatism” speech; his improbable presentation of Britain as a “young country”; the advocacy of a multicultural society which would have to reassess its own history, replacing traditional pride with inherited guilt: all of this could be facilitated by a large influx of migrants whose presence in the population would require the wholesale deconstruction of the country’s sense of its own identity.
This may all sound rather far-fetched now, but try to recall just how much hubris the New Labour tide brought with it in the beginning: the contempt for history and the Year Zero arrogance with which they set about “modernising” the nation’s institutions. It was, in this respect, a prime example of the new direction which Left-wing parties were forced to take in the wake of Marxism’s collapse. Having lost the great economic argument of the 20th century, the Left had to switch its focus to society itself: if humanity could not be transformed through the redistribution of wealth and the socialist command economy, then it would have to be transfigured by altering social relations.
The object of the exercise was still to produce, in the words of an old Left-wing protest song, a “new world” based on a “new man”. But now the new man (sorry, “person”) would be formed not by changes in the power of capital or the ownership of the means of production, but in cultural attitudes and behaviour. The revolution now had to be confined to what went on in people’s heads: to their values, their assumptions and their reactions to each other.
The phrase “altering consciousness”, which had once meant awakening the proletariat to its own economic enslavement, now referred to raising awareness of social injustices, such as intolerance of cultural differences, social inequality, or discrimination against minorities. But the subtext was always self-examination and personal guilt: the indigenous Briton must be trained (literally, by the education system) always to question the acceptability of his own attitudes, to cast doubt on his own motives, to condemn his own national identity and history, to accept the blame even for the misbehaviour of new migrants – whose conduct could only be a reflection of the unfortunate way they were treated by the host population.
Included in this programme for the newly constituted British psyche was a whole package of subliminal assumptions, which were adapted from the Old Left stable: international solidarity rather than national sovereignty, collective values rather than personal conscience, and “social equality” rather than individual achievement. It was a peculiarity of New Labour’s vanity that it actually tried to persuade the country that, under the miraculous Blair dispensation, it could have both sides of these dualities at the same time. But the full consequences of the new country that it envisaged, and the role that immigration was to play in the creation of it, broke the most basic rule of the democratic process: the electorate was never told it was voting for that.
The goal was a social revolution abetted by the influx of a huge variety of diverse cultures, which would provide both the need and the pretext for reshaping British life. It may have been relatively new (at least in Britain) as a specific political policy, but it was much of a piece with the conventional objective of Left-wing political movements, which is to transform human nature.
When you decide whether to give your support to a party of the Left or of the Right, you are actually making a judgment about what you think politics is for. If you believe that it is the function of government to alter or determine people’s perceptions and responses – their innermost feelings about themselves and others – then you will probably opt for the Left. If you take the view that the state should concern itself only with behaviour – with what people do, especially insofar as it affects other people, rather than what they think or feel – then you will be more likely to veer to the Right. So this is really a question of whether you want politics to be concerned with what goes on in people’s heads as much as with events in the objective world.
But of course, at least since the 1960s, when “raising consciousness” became the refrain of every group that sought change in any sphere, almost all parties have had to talk this way to some extent. It has become part of the politician’s acknowledged brief to suggest ways in which the internal lives and attitudes of voters can be influenced or directed. There is scarcely a party leader now who would dare to say that these matters are none of his (or any government’s) business.
Almost no one seems prepared to discuss the obvious danger: that if politics becomes a replacement for religion by taking upon itself the responsibility for transfiguring human nature then politicians, of all people, become the prophets and the priests. Just at the moment, I can’t think of a more absurd idea.

On this day in 1809, President Lincoln was born.  A heartfelt “Happy Birthday” to one of America’s greatest presidents.

Too bad, Mr. President, you used to have a holiday celebrating your birthday and giving cause for Americans to reflect on what made you a great president and the principles you held.  Since the Left took over the public sphere, they terminated your holiday.  They don’t want Americans honoring you, you see, or more worrisome, your principles.  So you had to go.  Sorry about that, but America has to be re-made along socialist principles.  And there is no room for Lincoln in today’s Brave New America.

Happy birthday, Mr. President.  From all of those Americans who still honor your principles, and you, and the United States of America.

In a story U.S. Old Media are reluctant to touch, today’s Telegraph reveals that Obama’s illegal alien aunt has her deportation hearing today. Of course it is closed so as not to run the risk of attracting British media, since U.S. Old Media won’t touch this.

She is scheduled to appear before a federal immigration court in Boston, where she has been living in a public housing development since 2008.
Her first asylum request was rejected, and she was ordered to be deported in 2004. But she didn’t leave the country and her status as an illegal immigrant was revealed just days before Obama was elected.
Obama says he didn’t know his aunt was living in the country illegally. He says laws covering the situation should be followed.
A judge agreed to reopen the asylum case, which will be closed to the public in accordance with Ms Onyango’s wishes.
Mike Rogers, spokesman for the Ohio law firm defending Ms Onyango, said she was not trying to “capitalise” on her relation to Mr Obama – whose father was Ms Onyango’s half-brother.

She has been living in public housing in Boston after she was ordered to be deported.  So, not only will the U.S. not enforce its immigration laws, but it allows law breakers to stay in public housing.  She probably votes too!

Americans live in a country that rewards lawbreaking.  And the President lies about not knowing his aunt is an illegal alien.  As President, he should say that, indeed, she should be deported because she broke the law.

This would have been unthinkable a generation ago.  It is another datum point capturing downward trend of the United States.

“Washington (CNN) — Preparing the U.S. military to fight two major
conventional wars is “out of date” and does not reflect the numerous
challenges U.S. military forces could face in the future, U.S. Defense
Secretary Robert Gates said Monday.

Gates made that pronouncement as he revealed the 2010 Quadrennial
Defense Review, the military’s strategic outlook. He said the military
needs to start planning for multiple operations such as major disasters
in the United States and various scuffles around the planet.”

Gates knows better than this.

He knows that China is the rising threat, and the U.S. military has to prepare to confront it, not just assisting in humanitarian disasters or chasing al Qaeda.

This is what happens to DoD when Democrats are in charge. Thank goodness Gates is there to provide some adult supervision.

This QDR is a man caused disaster to borrow a term from Homeland Security under Obama.

In a speech to the Republican House caucus, Obama says that his health proposal(s) are not a “Bolshevik plot.”

But if you were to listen to the debate and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you’d think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot. No, I mean, that’s how you guys — (applause) — that’s how you guys presented it.

Hmmm. I don’t remember Republicans ever raising the term Bolshevism or Bolshevik. But both are clearly on the President’s mind. Could it be because his health care proposal(s) are not at all about health care, but wealth transfer and increasing state control. Goals one might easily mistake for Bolshevik goals?

Abdul Muhammed attacked a recruiting station last year, killing one soldier and wounding another.

He now admits he was a jihadist here.

The Obama administration is hushing it up.  But the American people realize they are less secure under Obama with his disastrous policies toward terrorism.

You did the right thing by electing Scott Brown. Now there is a hope of stopping the larger parts of Obama’s agenda. But conservatives should not be complacent. There is still much work to be done before the elections this November and on to 2012.