Barack Obama, Alchemist In Chief

November 7, 2011

Individuals who have convinced sufficient Americans to vote for them to be President usually have carried adequate-to-outstanding academic credentials.  President Obama is no exception, having a Bachelor’s degree, plus a Juris Doctor’s degree (from Harvard, no less).  But a great many of us are wishing he had taken a few science, math or engineering courses—courses where the correct answers are not determined by ideology, opinion polls or judicial interpretation.  President Obama’s technology illiteracy is not just a matter of embarrassment; the cost to all of us is unsustainable.

We humans, like a lot of other animals, learn through experience.  As those experiences have been recorded for posterity, each new generation of researchers, as the saying goes, stands on the shoulders of those who came before.  In ancient times, long before the seeds of modern science were planted, alchemy was accepted as a legitimate scientific pursuit.  The best-known purpose of alchemy was its goal of converting base metals such as lead or tin into noble metals such as gold and silver.  That goal eluded its searchers for millennia, but it was thought to be possible, awaiting only a “right stuff” thinker who could accomplish what had proved impossible for so long.

Today the average person thinks of alchemy as a play toy of the incorrigible ignorant.  Although essentially true, that’s not a totally fair assessment, since alchemy was one of the seeds that lead toward modern science.  One alchemy-like problem we see today is the achievement of controlled nuclear fusion, like the controlled fission used in nuclear power plants.  But, unlike the efforts of those early alchemists, research that some day might lead to controlled fusion (the holy grail of energy sources) is being conducted by the world’s top scientists with supercolliders, supercomputers, and all of our modern research tools.

President Obama does not seem to understand that the alchemy of the middle ages cannot be made to work, in spite of his rhetoric and his desires.  It appears that his ingrained ideology and ignorance of (or contempt for) physics, mathematics and engineering makes him an easy target for confidence men.  It is painfully evident that our President believes that almost instantaneous elimination of fossil fuels is achievable via political fiat.  The President is not alone in his beliefs; many in his administration have the same fuzzy beliefs and the same contempt for those “little people” of science who can’t seem to understand what is wanted of them.

So we see billions and billions of our taxpayer dollars being donated for seed money in economically questionable renewable energy initiatives.  A recent winner in our energy folly lottery is the late lamented Solyndra company that filed for bankruptcy in early September.  At this point there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Solyndra, aside from poor management and possible lack of due diligence.

Poor decision-making and overconfidence are seen from time to time in totally private initiatives, those with no taxpayer money at risk and no political favor rewards (see Diogenes and Technology Breakthroughs).  Such examples just remind us that there is risk inherent in all business ventures.  Venture capitalists understand risk management very well, but still they continue to finance new startups regularly.  However, when the venture capital is taxpayer money (which belongs to no one) due diligence has, or should have, a completely different definition.

The use of tax monies to finance business startups is generally regarded as inappropriate, but there may be room for debate on that subject.  However, no debate should be required about risk management where public moneys are involved.  Most of us believe that investing taxpayers’ money in the finest, invisible, fabric from which to make the President’s new suit should be held up to considerably more scrutiny than its counterpart private investment.

But worse than questionable investments of our money is the President’s belief that if he can starve us of electricity from coal-fired plants, we will be forced to turn to wind or solar.  Unfortunately, our President doesn’t understand or believe that there is no replacement in sight for the electricity currently derived from coal.  Or perhaps he thinks we won’t mind the absence of power at night, when solar cells produce nothing and wind turbines produce little.

We voters are a little late in vetting our President’s technology awareness and competence (and also vetting his candidates for appointment to positions related to technology).  Our recourse at this point is to do our best to make sure that potential future Presidents do not have significant technology blind spots or contempt for technologists.  It would help if we could demand more technology familiarity from the media; technology-challenged reporters and anchors seem to be the norm.

My suggestion is to support candidates for President only if they are on a technology level of George Washington or better (or Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin, or…).

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Enough of the Class Envy Rhetoric, Already!

December 7, 2010

President Barack Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

President Obama, you have had about two years in office, and it is likely that you have produced more public communications in that period than any previous President.  Many of us commend you for your efforts to inform, to explain and to influence us.

Speaker Pelosi, you have also made efforts to inform us, to explain  inexplicable congressional bills, and to chide us when you think we need it.  You, also, are commended by many of us.

Majority Leader Reid, you have not been shy in telling us what you think we need to hear.  Undoubtedly, many commend you also.

As important as all of your speeches and other public pronouncements are to your cause and to your passion, they need refreshing.  Those of us who are not quite so youth-challenged can remember phonograph records (think of an ancient form of MP3).  The sound was produced by a stylus (“needle”) running the course of a prerecorded spiral groove which had microscopic variations that corresponded to the original sound.  For such an ancient technology, the reproduced sound was quite faithful to the live performance.  Unfortunately, phonograph records developed problems with overuse, or careless handling, across time.

A damaged groove could cause the stylus to simply keep repeating a short segment incessantly.  Very few people could tolerate that endless repetition of the same words or phrase. Your class-envy baiting at every opportunity now sounds like a stuck phonograph record to our ears (see Election, Congress, 2010).  It’s not working any more.

We know that your guru-hero was a 19th century “economist” who believed that class envy was too powerful an emotion to waste; therefore he developed a scheme of “governing” that depends entirely on exploitation of that emotion.  That scheme appeared to work at first, and it is still tried in places where citizens are ignorant and uninformed (see Chavez, Hugo, Venezuela, 2010).  But most Americans think that your belief in a  class-envy government puts you in the same category as Hans Christian Andersen’s Emperor, the one with the new clothes.

We understand that highly educated people in your lofty positions can come to have low opinions of us ordinary citizens; we do make stupid and childish decisions occasionally.  But astute observers of our antics will notice that, in the long run, we vote with our wallets and with our feet.  Hit us over the head a number of times; we will then stop paying you to deliver the pain, or we will get outside of your reach—or both.  Some of us are even smart enough to learn the need to take action, from watching you punish friends and neighbors, before you get around to hitting us personally.

Not nearly so many of us take perverse pleasure in watching you punish the more successful or more affluent as you must imagine.  Nor do we fail to understand that fifty percent of us pay very little or no income taxes and that your much-despised “top two percent of income earners” pay about 65% of all income taxes.  In fact, a great many of us are coming to the realization that the only “fair” tax is is a true flat tax (see Election, Congress, 2010).

President Obama, Speaker / Minority Leader Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid, please cease and desist with the endless and monotonous class envy rhetoric.  Stop demonizing those who are financially successful.  Try using logical reasoning instead of emotional appeals at least once in a while.  To be sure, we understand that a salesman’s gotta sell; but when the old sales pitch is stale, tired and tawdry, a new approach is in order.

You might even consider a radical change, one with some hope embedded.  If worse comes to worst, consider playing it straight—just to confuse us if for no other reason.  Pretend that the roadmap laid out for us by Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, et al actually works.  Act as if the United States really is exceptional; search for scraps of  hope hidden within the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Playing it straight for a while might surprise you.

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Chavez, Obama: Who Leads, Who Follows?

April 15, 2010

The competition between Hugo Chavez and Barack Obama continues to pique the curiosity.  While the immediate competition seems to be for the position of “Supreme Leader of the North and South American Union of Socialist States”, each competitor likely has higher ambitions.

It has appeared that the relationship between the two is that of Mentor (Hugo) to Protégé (Barack).  After all, Hugo Chavez has been the leader of Venezuela for more than ten years, whereas Barack Obama was only the junior senator from Illinois less than two years ago.  Obama has also had good things to say about Venezuela and Chavez on a number of  occasions, indicating a certain amount of admiration.  The rhetoric of Obama is frequently indistinguishable from that of Chavez, and his legislative goals seem to be mirroring those of his presumed mentor.  Both have also picked similar political targets for demonizing.

Chavez has worked diligently on securing his position over the last few  years.  He has silenced dissent everywhere in Venezuela except for internet bloggers, and he is presumably now following Iran’s lead in blocking that source of sedition.  Hugo has eliminated term limits for his office, eliminated all political parties other than his own, and is making good progress in eliminating state and local elected leaders.  Chavez also launched his national police force in December in an effort to bring “crime” under control; they will likely focus on the crime of opposing Chavez or any of his initiatives.  In short, Hugo Chavez is now as secure in his office as Josef Stalin was in his.

Lately, Barack Obama seems to have paused in his campaign to establish himself as President for Life.  Those of his ideological soulmates who run the major television networks, newspapers and news magazines continue to bite their tongues and say no evil regarding their champion. However, Obama has quite a few vociferous critics from other quarters, principally talk radio.  Yet the President has not implemented the long-expected FCC censorship of his “enemies”, a program called the “fairness doctrine”.

Nor has the President taken any public steps toward implementing his announced national police force, based on the Venezuelan and Cuban models.  So far his action has been limited to demonizing everyone who opposes any of his legislative or executive proposals.  It appears that Obama is relying heavily on his plan to assure continuing Democratic majorities by having White House staff fabricate  U. S. Census results.  The guaranteed favorable redistricting for the Democratic Party thereby should work as well as Chavez’ forbidding other political parties.  However, it is not clear what path or what actions the President intends to take for nullification of the 22th amendment to the Constitution to eliminate term limits for himself.

Chavez has hit a few political bumps recently.  The only one that was not expected was the electricity shortage, seriously aggravated by a continuing drought (one hydroelectric facility is the primary supply for most of the country).  Hugo’s slight-of-hand change to the official exchange rate for the Venezuelan Bolivar has been exposed quicker and more widely than he expected, but he was aware that success would be time-limited.  Chavez is also finding it more and more difficult to juggle his price controls, trying to keep artificially low prices for his base of voters.  Those prices, below the cost of production, keep putting producers out of business, resulting in extreme shortages or absence altogether, of those low-cost goods in the marketplace.

With all of his difficulties, it still appears that Chavez has all but completed the “unanimous three” tasks required for successful socialist leaders:  control of the news media, elimination of the middle class as a political force, and getting citizens to accept Government as their religion.  When the internet control mechanisms that Iran has put in place are imported and active in Venezuela, Chavez won’t have any trouble from the media.  The middle class, fleeing Venezuela as they are able, are systematically being stripped of their economic wherewithal via the series of laws and regulations, tax increases, and currency manipulations that Hugo has imposed.  It is obvious that a growing number of Chavez’ core supporters do consider him some sort of deity.  Therefore Chavez is left with only one ever-present, continuing worry:  another would-be revolutionary who is diligently searching for the opportunity to eliminate or overthrow today’s occupant of the presidential palace.

Although Obama trails Chavez in progress toward completion of his three essential tasks, he is nonetheless making measurable progress.  His “Health Care Reform” initiative was cleverly deemed to have passed both houses of Congress, and he quickly signed it into law.  This represents half of his program to drain the middle class of their accumulated “wealth”.  The second half, the “Cap and Trade” law, can now get Obama’s full attention and efforts to sneak it through Congress as well.

President Obama’s progress toward getting Americans to accept Government as their religion is more difficult to judge than that of his mentor.  Certainly a number of his old neighborhood organizer clients and their fellow-travelers worship Barack Obama; it is not a coincidence that his campaign materials contained that saintly likeness of him in a religious-icon setting.  We also watched television clips of the ACORN ladies praying to Obama at that organization’s annual meeting during the presidential campaign.  President Obama exhibits an unusually thin skin for a Chicago machine politician; his attitude suggests that he believes his political opponents should treat him with the heavenly reverence he is due.

At this point Chavez has little to do but wait for the international price of oil to go up, and to keep pandering to the old-line Communist states.  For an ostensible man of action, this somewhat helpless state must be grating on the old bully.

Obama, in contrast, seems to be energized and he continues to edge his way out of the Communist closet.  His “overwhelming victory” with the health care initiative appears to be the catalyst for more and more expensive legislative proposals, aiming for an overkill on the middle class’s financial wherewithal.  His inability to silence all criticism of his job performance is probably the only irritant that could keep him from sleeping like a baby.

Perhaps Obama has become the mentor and Chavez is relegated to student.  When the London and Las Vegas oddsmakers start posting their numbers for the two contenders, we should have a clearer picture of who is leading whom.

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The Dummy’s Guide to President Obama

February 23, 2010

Two features of the Great Plains, where I was born, are biting Arctic winds  in winter, and few trees.  We tend to believe that some of those harsher realities of life on the prairie have contributed to more colorful speech.  Most of us heard of  “…those winters where we walked three miles to school, wading through thigh-deep snow.  And it was uphill in both directions!”  Not quite as often we received the meteorology tutorial, “The only thing that slows down that wind is a barbed wire fence up in North Dakota, and three of its five strands are down”.

Another figure of speech with a Great Plains connection we still see today.  Whenever a real estate developer produces a residential development that is flat as a landing field, with every last tree bulldozed down,  what is it named?  It becomes Vienna Woods, Alpine Forest, Oak Hills, or anything that evokes pleasant visions of rolling hills and green forests.

We prairie denizens grew up hearing such canards and exaggerations, and our brains eventually conditioned us not to react to them.  Perhaps that’s why so many of us  have not taken issue with some of President Obama’s more colorful use of wishful-thinking figures of speech to camouflage undesirable realities that he prefers we not recognize or think about.

Our very private President has been diligent in keeping his true feelings hidden from all but his closest inner circle.  A few items in his two autobiographies, combined with his associations with notorious radicals, raised questions in our minds. We saw a few slips, such as his inadvertent “spread the wealth” admonition to Joe the Plumber during the Presidential campaign, that provided a little insight.   In his public speaking he continues to choose words very carefully and very deliberately, as if he were cross-examining a wily defendant in court.

Now, with almost two year’s worth of high-profile presentation events, almost incessant campaign speeches, and an abundance of very carefully chosen interview opportunities,  President Obama has accumulated a sizable public record.  More and more of us are coming to realize that we have given the President a lot more slack than we probably should have.

We heard, numerous times during the Presidential campaign, that Liberal and Conservative watchdog organizations agreed on the fact that Senator Obama was the most liberal senator in that body.  Now, many of us wonder why the watchdog organizations’ appraisals did not raise more red flags in our minds.  In any event, people around the world now agree that Barack Obama is is a very left-leaning politician.  What is not yet a consensus is the particular political label with which to prefix “President Barack Obama”.

One tool which all political junkies should have is “The Dummy’s Guide to President Obama”.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t been published yet; fortunately, everyone can make his or her own Guide.

First, fetch your copy of  Saul Alinsky’s  “Rules for Radicals“.  Extract Alinsky’s list of Rules and his list of Ethics, and enter them into your favorite Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

Next, dust off your copy of  Marx’ and Engels’ “The Communist Manifesto“, and compile the “10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto” into your PDA.

Two more entries will finish your Guide.  The first is an old quote from Adolph Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”  that across time has changed somewhat and has become attached to, or attributed to, one of Saul Alinsky’s heroes, Joseph Goebbels:   “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.  The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.  It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State”.

Finally, enter the famous quote about stealth methodology from Roger Nash Baldwin, a founder of the ACLU and one of Obama’s idols:   “Do steer away from making it look like a Socialist enterprise …We want also to look like patriots in everything we do. We want to get a good lot of flags, talk a good deal about the Constitution and what our forefathers wanted to make of this country, and to show that we are really the folks that really stand for the spirit of our institutions”.

[For those of you who are not yet chained to some form of electronic PDA, you can still create a laminated breast pocket card, which works quite well and requires no batteries.]

Now you can refer to your new personal “Guide to Obama” whenever you need to determine what his response will be in any particular situation.  You can be assured that President Obama’s reaction will be within that envelope of  Marx’ and Alinsky’s philosophies, Goebbels’ truth postulate, and Baldwin’s stealth advice.

In the meantime, however, we will still have to wait for the pundits to agree on the proper label for President Obama.  Will they agree on Pragmatist, Progressive, Liberal, Fascist, Socialist,  Communist, Savior of the World?  But we know that the President will act quite predictably,   continuing to demonize bankers, Wall Street financial firms, insurance companies, mortgage brokers, hospitals, doctors, medical industry companies, Republicans, companies and corporations which make a profit, Tea Party attendees, States’ elected officials, Fox News Channel, U. S. citizens, …

At present we can take comfort in knowing that two of his titles are accurate and well-earned:  Ideologue-in-Chief and Demagogue-in-Chief.

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Obama Has Bully Pulpit Opportunity

January 23, 2010

“A Bully Pulpit is a Terrible Thing to Waste”

Barack Obama has utilized his impressive education credentials, his ability to effectively read and deliver a speech, his undoubted ambition, and his uncanny ability to mesmerize liberal minds to earn the highest political office in the United States.  In the terminology of grade school report cards of the past, he has definitely worked up to capacity.  His path from modest beginnings, as pictured in his two autobiographies, puts him up there on the level with Horatio Alger Award recipients.  His story should appeal to all young people, and a few older ones, especially those who are in difficult financial or social circumstances.  In summary, President Obama should be able to use the bully pulpit of the U. S. Presidency effectively.

However, the President’s success in the pulpit has been amazingly meager—essentially non-existent.  To date, his sermons have been overly general (“Share the Wealth”), without foundation (“Healthcare is a Birthright”), or seemingly self-serving (“Remember the Evil of My Predecessor”).  As a result, his opportunities for urging us all on to higher and better lives have been greatly diminished.  It could be said that he has fumbled the one service he is qualified and suited to perform in his current position.

Even so, the President has at least one outstanding opportunity to redeem himself.  Of all the slogans we might remember from past years of advertising, two stand out as memorable and effective:  “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste” (Traditional Black Colleges fund raising) and “Be All You Can Be” (U. S. Army recruiting).  One would think that this President, uniquely, could appreciate both and put them to good use.

Bill Cosby has been speaking frankly, and courageously, to the half or more of the black community in America that still believes it is trapped in a position of economic and political subservience by the non-black majority.  Mr. Cosby, who earned a doctorate in education before his show business fame, has been speaking to black parents and students about the value of education and the necessity of staying in school.  He has admonished students to read, write and speak standard English as a prerequisite for many or most jobs today.  Walking on even thinner ice, he has reminded his audiences of other self-dropped anchors that tend to hold back young blacks, including the 70+ percent of black babies born out of wedlock.

Most of us don’t particularly like being reminded of our shortcomings, irrespective of the truth.  So it is not surprising that Cosby would suffer some amount of criticism; but the source of the criticism is, if not also surprising, still regrettable.  A number of well-known black “leaders” have been vocal and vicious in their criticism of Mr. Cosby.  Juan Williams, the National Public Radio correspondent, was prompted to write his book, “Enough!”, in response to that torrent of verbal abuse.

But what if President Obama were to admonish those same black audiences that “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste” and to encourage them to “Be All You Can Be”?  What if he addressed the issue of those black students who are taunted by other students (of the anti-education crowd) that doing well in school is “acting white“?  What if he continued delivering essentially the same message that Bill Cosby has delivered, but in his own style?  Would those self-serving saboteurs among black leaders have the courage to attack the President?  I think not.

More importantly, Barack Obama has more resources with which to follow up than does Bill Cosby.  One thing he could do quickly and easily is to appoint Dr. Cosby, a credentialed  and competent individual for a change, as his Education Czar.

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Barack Obama Education Credentials: Parody to the People

October 21, 2009

President Obama is, as has been widely reported in the media, well educated.  He attended Occidental College, and subsequently graduated from Columbia University.  He later attended Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude.  He has refused to release any school records, so we don’t know what subjects he studied or what grades he received in those courses.  However, we can deduce that he has a number of other educational credentials—accomplishments rarely mentioned in most media accounts.

One obscure educational accomplishment is occasionally referenced in a few newspapers and news channels.  Barack Obama is a graduate of the Cook County Richard Daley School of Political Warfare, and his record of political maneuvers strongly suggests that he must be an honored graduate.

There is one bit of Obama’s education, though, that we get to see him put into practice almost every day.   He is clearly a magna cum laude graduate of the Joseph Goebbels School of Truth.  Although there has been some amount of criticism of the vetting process for the President’s senior administration officials, each candidate’s Joseph Goebbels School education is surely verified without fail.  These officials consistently and faithfully practice what they learned at the School of Truth.

Another of the President’s accomplishments is occasionally mentioned, but he rarely gets full credit in the media.  Not only is Barak Obama an honored graduate of the Saul Alinsky College of Radical Extremism, it is widely believed that he can quote all of Alinsky’s Rules and Alinsky’s Ethics, even without a teleprompter.  This learning is also another primary requisite for all Obama Administration candidates.

On the Internet, and in a few media commentators’ sound bytes, there are numerous references to another area of Barack Obama’s education—as well as what he told us in his two books of memoirs.  The President is well schooled in Karl Marx’ economics (“Das Kapital”) and Marx’ political prescriptions (“The Communist Manifesto”).  A number of the President’s advisers publicly and proudly refer to their own Marx education and knowledge.

It is believed that President Obama is most proud of his graduation from the Neville Chamberlain School of Appeasement.  It is certain that rulers of several countries of the world also most appreciate this particular facet of Obama’s education.  One of the President’s latest educational honors is the Neville Chamberlain School award of Fellow, Neville Chamberlain Institute of Arab Appeasement.

Another of President Obama’s achievements is his mastery of the techniques taught at the Heinrich Himmler Institute of Administrative Management.  Obama’s Chief of Staff appears to be supremely qualified to teach at the Himmler Institute.

There is a small amount of disagreement as to whether Obama actually graduated from the Al Capone Institute of Advanced Behavioral Modification or just audited the course.  It matters little, though, because his Chief of Staff is the national authority in this area.

It is quite possible that Barack Obama’s personal favorite among his educational accomplishments is his graduation from the Abraham Lincoln College of Constitutional Evasion.  Obama mentions Lincoln often, and it is probably this aspect of Lincoln’s record that he is referring to.

Our reservations about Barack Obama’s presidency are rising alarmingly, as are our concerns about the country’s well being.  In the meantime we are left with the thought that the President is, at least educationally, prepared to perform at the level of famous world leaders in history such as Caligula of Rome, Ivan IV of Russia, or Vlad III of Romania.  It remains to be seen if he can create the opportunities for such greatness for himself, and if the masses in the United States will continue to accept  him for what they wish he could become.

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Obama Is Not a Socialist!

July 25, 2009

As the “cap and trade” and “health care reform” bills gradually become less stealthy and more visible, a lot of normally reasonable people are now calling President Obama a Socialist. I don’t believe this is productive, and besides, it’s not really accurate. A better approach, in my opinion, is to confine our ideological labels for Obama to those he has admitted to or told us about.

In the short period that Obama has been in control of the media, he has repeatedly said, “I am a Pragmatist”. Now, that is something we can work with. As I recall, Pragmatism was a political movement in the U. S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It had a fairly short run under that name. It then segued into Progressivism (the Progressives had minor differences with the Pragmatists), with essentially the same people involved.  But that’s not the end of the story.

Around 1908 – 1910 the Progressives abandoned ship for a slightly different political movement, Fascism. The flag bearer of Fascism was, of course, Benito Mussolini, who became famous for making the trains run on time and for picking real losers as friends.

Just as Mussolini was effectively gaining and consolidating power in Italy, the Russian civil war devolved into a “noble experiment” called Socialism. There probably wasn’t a tenth of a centimo difference between Pragmatism, Progressivism, Fascism and Socialism; but political junkies fear being out of fashion more than anything else in life.

Because Mussolini was still rising, and making a name for himself, not all Fascists immediately started calling themselves Socialists. But there was even more consternation ahead for the political fad followers.

In Germany, Adolf Hitler was becoming the Austro-German darling, and he called his organization the National Socialist German Workers (NAZI) Party. But most of the time he referred to his government as Fascist—go figure!

Meanwhile back in Russia, Vladimir Lenin had decided to call Russia’s version of Socialism “Communism”.  Talk about confusion:  Pragmatism, Progressivism, Fascism, Socialism, Communism—differing like one banana split with Chocolate on the left, Vanilla in the middle, Strawberry on the right differs from another with Strawberry on the left, Chocolate in the middle, Vanilla on the right differs from . . .

Back to Obama the Pragmatist.  Aside from his Pragmatist self-anointment in numerous speeches and other public performances, Obama has provided us with a couple of clues.  Between his two autobiographies, he told us that when he was living with his grandparents in Hawaii two well-known Communists were frequent family visitors (one being the Hawaii organizer for the Communist Party USA), and that when he was in college he was “attracted to Marxists and Marxist groups”.

But please don’t jump to conclusions and start calling Obama a Communist.  The term “Communist” has as many definitions and connotations as the aforementioned banana split.  Surely we can be more precise.

Obama’s repeated calls for “wealth redistribution”, “social justice”, and  “elimination of corporate greed” certainly indicate a Marxist outlook.  Obama’s legislative initiatives—banking takeover, executive compensation caps, auto-manufacturing control—are precisely the types of things Karl Marx advocated in “Das Kapital”.

So we would be fair and accurate to label Barak Obama a Marxist (although a political scientist friend insists that the precise term should be “Marxist Leninist”).

At this point we Americans should pray that President Obama actually read the U. S. Constitution; truly understand that document; and develop a belief  that the United States is worth preserving.

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